Hi there,

I'm trying to setup a new primary partition on my main disk but seem to be running into a few dificulties. I can run fdisk fine and end up with the following output from fdisk -l /dev/hda;

~# fdisk -l /dev/hda

Disk /dev/hda: 1039 MB, 1039417344 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2014 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 1016 512032+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 * 1017 2014 502488 83 Linux

However the problem comes when I try to run mkfs.ext2 where I get;

~# mkfs.ext2 /dev/hda2
mke2fs 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006)
mkfs.ext2: No such device or address while trying to determine filesystem size

Not sure why this is the case.

Any ideas?

Joe

Have you tried mke2fs /dev/hda2
http://linux.die.net/man/8/mke2fs

Yes, unfortunately the same thing happens

Have you rebooted since creating the partition ?. What does "cat /proc/partitions" show ?.

There are ways of forcing the partition table to be re-read. The only one I know that always works is a re-boot.

when I run cat /proc/partitions i get;

~# cat /proc/partitions
major minor #blocks name

3 0 1015056 hda
3 1 512032 hda1

Which obviously doesn't show the new partition. I'm a little worried about rebooting after editing the partitions in fdisk as I only have remote access. Do any edits made in fdisk format the partition? The only thing I have changed about hda1 is the boot element. Will this have formatted that partition or is it ok to set this back as the main boot partition?

fdisk merely plays with partition definitions - not contents. It doesn't "format" anything.
But you may not be asking what you think you're asking.
I presume by "The only thing I have changed about hda1 is the boot element" you mean the boot flag (the aster in the list above) ???.
It gets ignored by Linux - do as you please.

To save a remote re-boot, tryThat may save you any angst.

Is that disk really only 1GB or is that an anomaly?

Based on those calculations, fdisk sees a kilo as 1000, not 1024.
EDIT: I have smaller drives than that, on the shelf that is.