Hi,

I could not write on my external USB harddisk in suse, since it was formatted in NTFS (I guess). So I backuped the data, and tried to format it in FAT with the partitioning tool in yast. Several attempts did not succed, until finally I formated it first as Reiser, and then as FAT. Unfortunately, I supplied a wrong mountpoint, though. I typed in /home/tobias/Desktop
I realised that what I did was wrong, I could not change it back though, Suse would not allow me access to the harddrive.

So I thought a restart could do the job, and now I am stuck in a black window with a command prompt, asking me for my root password. After typing it in, I am somehow not logged in as linux nor as tobias, and startx does not work.

Help, anyone?

Here is the error message I get:

fsck failed for at least one file system (not /) please repair manually and reboot. The root file system is already mounted read-write

I am then asked to supply my root-password. The following command prompt looks like this:

(none):~#

if I type in "fsck" and then "yes" I get this message:

fsck.reiserfs /dev/hda2/ failed (status 0x10) run manually

I belive hda2 is my / partition. I also have another hda partition for windows, same physical drive. My external drive was always mounted as sda1, if I remember correctly.

Please help. Have important data backed up now on my suse partition and cannot afford fresh install (which would probably take less time).
I am running Suse10.0 by the way.

Is this correct: You had SuSE installed and running on your PC. You wanted to connect a new USB drive, and after formatting it you edited your fstab but specified the wrong mountpoint.

If that's accurate, just disconnect the USB drive and reboot. The system will not be able to mount the USB drive incorrectly (because it's not connected at all) and your normal system should be restored. From there, just edit fstab again to make the correction. Good luck with it

Hi,
I did not edit fstab. Upon plugging in my NTFS formated external hard drive, it appeared in suse10 under /media/backup (<-- name of the drive assigned by windows). I could access it and copy data from the external drive to my suse 10 partition. So I thought it was already mounted, no need to edit fstab.
Writing to the drive from Suse did not work, however. I thought this was because it is formated in NTFS. Therefore I tried to format it to FAT with patition tool under Yast (after I backed up the data on the external drive).
I tried several times to delete the ntfs partition and format it as FAT, and in the end somehow succeded. I then set a mount point (also in the partition tool under yast) as /home/tobias/Desktop, believing this would put an icon on my desktop whenever the drive is connected. I realised my mistake and tried to undo this mount point, format it again, but did not succed.
Then I restarted the machine and now, with or without the drive connected, I get the error described above.
Hope this helps
Tobias

by typing in init 5 at the command prompt, I could start the graphical system and login. Besides that many drivers are not loaded now (no sound, no internet), my external harddisk does not appear anymore as device when I type fdisk -l as root.
How can I get my external harddisk back? How can I check if the usb drivers are loaded?

Thanks

typing lsusb as root with the external drive connected results in this output:

bus 004 device 001: id: 0000:0000
bus 003 device 001: id: 0000:0000
bus 002 device 001: id: 0000:0000
bus 001 device 003: id: 04b4:6830 Cypress semiconductor corp. usb-2.0 ide adapter
bus 001 device 001: id: 0000:0000

how can i format the drive, how can i set a mount point? is it detected correctly?

in /etc/fstab I have an entry for the disk. It goes as follows:

/dev/sda/ /home/tobias/Desktop reiserfs defaults 1 2

it must have been put the while I fiddled around in the partitioning tool in yast. would it help to edit this?

Sorry for bombarding you with questions. I just would like to have my harddisk back.

You could try to boot from your installation CD and run the automatic repair tool. This should repair your fstab. I know, you think you haven't changed it, but this is something the partitioner does. Be sure the USB drive is unplugged. See http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:YaST_System_Repair for more info.

EDIT: If you want to edit this file manually, you may need to remount the filesystem writable. It sounds like a good idea to take out this entry. You shouldn't mount a complete device (sda). Always use the partitions numbers (e.g. sda1). But the automatic repair should do the job.

Hi abiskoOO,

I unplugged the usb device, as root typed "vi /etc/fstab" and manually deleted the entry for sda, rebooted, and bingo. Suse loads normally without errors. So no need for a system restore, I guess.

Upon plugging in the drive again, it is recognised and appears as /media/usbdisk. In the partitioning tool in yast, it is listed as sda with an active partition sda1 formated in Linuxnative. I cannot write to the drive as default user, but as root yes.
the drive has no entry in fstab.

Now, questions:
Am I back to where I started?
How can I format the drive in FAT, so it is readable by both windows and Linux?
How can I make an icon of the drive appear on the Desktop once it is connected in Linux?

Cheers
Tobias

I always use command-line tools: cfdisk /dev/sda to create partitions and set the partition type, mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/sda1 to create the filesystem. You don't need to set any mountpoints, as you see.

Works fine now!

In yast-system-partitioner I deleted the /sda1 partition of the /sda device. Then I created a new partition, formated it as FAT and ticked in the Fstab option "do not mount at startup" and "mountable by user". I did not define any mount point.
After pressing ok, the device is being formated, I then restarted the machine (just for the sake of it) and all is fine. The partition is visible as /media/usbdisk, I can read and write to it as normal user.
In /etc/fstab the usb device with its FAT partition is not visible.

How can I make the drive appear as desktop icon once it is connected (MAC style)?