Hello,
I have installed FC5 on my computer:
My setup is as follows:
/hda---Windows XP by itself

/hdb----Fedora Core 5 and bootloader on this drive

I have a Backup windows partition(hda2). I would like to just share that drive betwee both OS'.

I added:

# my files partition shared by windows and linux
/dev/hda2 /shared vfat umask=000 0 0

To my fstab file

I made an empty folder called shared under my / for it to mount to.

I ran:

[root@localhost ~]# mount /shared
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda2,
missing codepage or other error
(aren't you trying to mount an extended partition,
instead of some logical partition inside?)
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so

Any ideas on what this means. Input will be greatly appreciated.

In a nutshell an extended partition is a container for logical partition which allows one to create up to 63 partitions on an IDE or 15 on a SATA or SCSI. Any partition with a #>=5 is a logical partition i.e hda5-hda63. Partitions 1-4 are primary. Typically if you created more then one drive in windows, the D: drive will be a logical drive and hda2 is the extended. Look at the output of the command
fdisk -l (a small L and you must be root to run command)

An extended partition can not be mounted.

When I run fdisk-l from the command line as root I get:
[root@localhost ~]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hdb: 20.5 GB, 20547841536 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2498 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hdb2 14 2498 19960762+ 8e Linux LVM

First of all my second hard drive being hdb is 20GB. I want to split it directly 50 50 by creating a hdb3(FAT32) partition that will be the remaining 10GB. First I realize I need to resize my hdb2 to allow for it to be created.

I have tried resizing my /hdb many times in "parted" by running
(parted) resize /dev/hdb2 50% 100%
Error: Expecting a partition number.
(parted)

Any input on what im doing wrong.

Well, I'd guess you didn't input a partition number...
Also if you read the man-page it says:



So using % won't work.

Correct syntax would be something like:
# parted /dev/hdb resize 2 52Mb 104Mb mkfs 3 vfat

(<- taken from the info page, I changed it slightly. I'm guessing that it uses vfat for fat32)

Hovever I think you should install a graphical interface for parted, like gparted, and use that. It will probably be alot easier.

Though, I think you should know that ntfs-3g can read and write ntfs just fine. I don't think it's available for fc5. Though, If your willing to upgrade to fc6, I'd recommend that instead.
There are also ext3 drivers available for windows. The one I have allows both reading and writing, and works fine as far as I can tell.

Hi,
Thanks for the advice. I found a manual that said I could use percentage values as well.
Thanks for the info on gparted and ext drivers.
I have had my beef with Fedora Core 6. It works great but it wont properly shutdown, someone suggested to modify my kernel to solve it, just never got a chance yet.

To refine my question into a subpart. How does linux number partitions I have never been able to understand that.

hdb2 looks to be an lvm partition. If you have enough free space (or you could shrink the partitions) why not just make it out of that?

You can find out how big the partition is by using the command
and how much you've used:
and subtracting the total amount of lvdisplay from the size shown in pvdisplay.

Btw, the ext3 driver for windows that I use can be found here, if you are curious...

How does linux number partitions?

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

IDE drives:
hda = 1st controller master
hdb = 1st controller slave
hdc = 2nd controller master
hdd = 2nd controller slave

So hda1 is 1st primary partition on the 1st controller master drive. Primary partitions are 1-4. logical partitions are anything >=5. All 4 primary partitions do not have to exist. To create logical partitions one of the 4 primary partitions are designated as an extended partition. Logical partitions start at 5 and labeled in consective order. Lets say you have 3 logical partitions 5-7. If you delete 6 then 7 will now be 6. Typically if you create multiple partitions in a windows drive hda1 will be c:, hda2 extended, hda5 will be d:, hda6 e: etc.

Drives with a device ID of sd (i.e sda) drives can be SCSI, Firewire, USB or SATA since they all use the SCSI subsystem.