Hello,

I am on mandriva2006 PPack.

I have a SATA sda1 disk mounted as

/fileserver.

I want to mount it as :

/fileserver

But as sda2 without loosing any data.

I have tried chaging fstab and changing
the disk to sda2. It did not work.

Is it possible ?

Thanks

Varun

Why do you want to change the device name? Or is it a different disk you want to mount at the same mountpoint?

Sorry,

It should be sdb1 and not sda2.

Thanks

Varun

Still - why?

I'm not an expert on this (particularly about SATA systems), but I believe the device designations are determined by the actual physical layout of the partitions on your hard drive, as well as which IDE/SATA channel/cable the drive is attached to (if you have more than one hard drive in your system.) So "SDA" would be the first hard drive, "SDB" the 2nd, etc. So if you have multiple drives in your machine, you would most likely have to switch them around to do what you're asking.

pnellesen is right at least for IDE drives. Try changing connecting your HD on another port if you persist on sdb. But be warned: messing around with bootloader, fstab and mtab are programmed!

Let me see if I understand ...

Right now, you are mounting /dev/sda1 at /fileserver in the linux filesystem, but you want to mount /dev/sdb1 at that point (/fileserver). Is this correct?

Do you want to make this change permanent, or do you want to switch which partition is mounted (/dev/sda1 or /dev/dsb1) at /fileserver?

To permanently change the partition mounted at /fileserver, unmount the partition:

umount /fileserver

Edit /etc/fstab. Change sda1 to sdb1 in the line referring to the /fileserver mount point.

Mount the partition:

mount /fileserver

Now /dev/sdb1 should be mounted at /fileserver

If what you are trying to achieve is to make the files on both drives available under /fileserver, perhaps you should set up two mount points:

/fileserver/first

and

/fileserver/second

then mount /dev/sda1 to /fileserver/first and /dev/sdb1 to /fileserver/second.

Of course, the sub-directory names first and second can be replaced with any name of your choice (e.g.: a and b, public and private, one and two, etc.).

You can make this change in the Mandriva Control Center (System / Configuration / Configure your computer in the menu system).

Open MCC

Click Mount Points in the category list (left).

Click Create, delete and resize hard disk partitions (opens Partition Manager).

Click the tab for the Hard Disk to be worked with (top).

Select the partition to be worked with.

If the selected partition is currently mounted, click the unmount button in the Choose Action list (left).

Click the Mount Point button in the Choose Action list (left).

Enter or edit the mount point (e.g.: /fileserver/first or /fileserver/second etc.) by entering the new mount point information in the Mount point text entry field.

Click the [B[OK[/B[ button (bottom right).

Click the Mount button in the Choose Action list (right).

Make any other mount point changes or additions as needed.

Remember to mount any partition you want automatically mounted at boot time.

If you need to set permissions for any mount point, click the Toggle to expert mode button (bottom right-center). This adds the Type, Options, and Label buttons to the Choose Action list (left).

When you have completed your changes in the Partition Manager click the Done button (bottom right), then close MCC.

Your changes should be effective now, and persist after a reboot.

I am not sure that I answered your question since it is unclear what you are trying to do. I hope this has been helpful.

@ernie

As I understand, there is only one HD which, for some obscure reason, should be named sdb instead of sda. This means you have to physically switch the connections on the controller. Now, if there are two HD's you are correct of course. But then the original poster was somewhat unclear.

I am unable to imagine any reason for wanting to make a drive sdb1 instead of sda1 other than to connect another drive as sda1. That is why I responded as I did .