Created partition, mounted it, headache

kellinjar · 10-02-2006, 12:02 PM

I had 20 gb sitting unclaimed on my drive and had to move some Vmware machines. I used fdisk to make it a partition, rebooted and mounted it. However when copying files to it, it gives me an error about not being able to maintain ownership, then when trying to load the machines in vmware, it gives me a variety of errors claiming it can't create logs, then says it can't lock the file, then fails to start the virtual machine. Anyone know how I can clear this up? I assume its the fact that the partition was mounted as root, but everytime I try to chgrp or chown the directory the partition is mounted to (even when unmounted) it fails.

I've added it to my fstab. Would rebooting and letting the system mount it help?

b0uncer · 10-02-2006, 01:01 PM

What filesystem does it use? I have encountered many of those errors when trying to copy data to a FAT-drive (fat16/32); it doesn't support ownerships so it makes sense. If you created the filesystem as fat, I suggest that if you don't use Windows on it, switch it to something else, like ext2 or ext3 (latter one is journalled).

kellinjar · 10-02-2006, 02:32 PM

I used the default in fdisk, just n for a new partition and defaulted to using the remaining space. I meant to make it ext3, so it just shows up as "Linux". I may destroy it and recreate it.

farslayer · 10-02-2006, 03:03 PM

Is the partition type 83 ?

How did you format the partition ?

The following two commands (use either one) make an ext3 file system.
mke2fs -j /dev/hdb1
mkfs.ext3 /dev/hdb1

The only reason I ask is that you stated you creeated a partition and mounted it but never mentioned formatting it. I wasn't sure if we were supposed to assume you formatted it as EXT3 or if you might have fogotten to do that step..

kellinjar · 10-02-2006, 03:23 PM

I forgot to do that step, which is likely what caused the issue, I'll recreate the partition as ext3 and hopefully that will clear up the issue.

[edit] that did it. I copied out the virtual machine, formatted it in ext3, and chown and chgrp the files for my account. It seems to work okay now. Thanks guys.

J.W. · 10-02-2006, 06:26 PM

Thanks for posting back witth the followup kellinjar

farslayer · 10-02-2006, 10:04 PM

Wow glad it was that simple..

I almost didn't post that solution thinking nah he wouldn't forget thaty step would he ? But then again the first rule of troubleshooting is to look at all the obvious stuff first.. (is it plugged in ? Is it turned on ? ) Then move on to the more difficult steps. heh amazing the things we forget when we are in a rush ehh ? Glad you got it all worked out