I'm a linux newbie. I have sussed out basic configuration, Installed Redhat and i'm up and running.

I have a network with a bunch of windows boxes and a few macs. I have installed samba on the linux machine and have managed to get the PC's to see it and my file sharing works a treat.

My Problem should be relatively easy for you guys.
All I want to do is add a hard disk dedicated to store my files for the users on the network to access - nothing else.

Now how the hell do I format the drive (ntfs formatted already - old windoze disk) to linux format? I have searched the net for the answer to my question, but to no avail. I'm sure it's just a small bit of code i'll need to put in, but what the hell is it??
I don't need to save any of the files on the disk, all I wanna do is wipe it and make it linux format...

Pleeaase someone help a newbie bitch.

Ta.

hehe, no need to deride yourself that much, a simple "i'm thick" normally works

i presume you're wanting this drive under linux? just plug it in and format it to ext3 or at least fat32. NTFS support doesn't happen under linux, for various closed source reasons.

you've not said what distro you're using, so the basic effiecnt way to do it is...

conenct the drive up and load linux

use "fdisk -l" to list connected drives, find out which one out of hda/hdb/hdc/hdd the drive is connected to. you may well know already tho. next up you need to clear the whloe thing...

cfdisk /dev/hdX (X = a/b/c or d)

and remove all the old partitions, and then create a new linux one (type 81 in the list). once that's written, format it with.

mke2fs /dev/hdXY (Y = partition number)

OR if you're using a newer distro that supports ext3 (i.e. redhat 7.2, mandrake 8.1...) use

mke2fs -j /dev/hdXY

this version just adds an ext3 journal to the system, meaning it will recover better if it crashes etc...

after that just mount it somewhere and edit the samba config to get it shared.

should be all you need. maybe.

Acid, you're a star chap. Worked a treat! Well, bar a slight confusion with your instructions

"cfdisk /dev/hdX (X = a/b/c or d)" - took a me a little while to suss out that the 'c' was a typo... heh

Nice one.

Whilst we are on the subject, or maybe not but it's worth asking anyway - Does anyone have any idea how to configure either samba, or a mac so that the mac kids can access files from the linux machine via samba? Got the windows machines running smoothly on it (well, as smoothly as microshaft can get) nows it's time for the Apple people.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers chaps

no cfdisk is a nicer version of fdisk, with some menus as things in it. you should have it on your machine somewhere.

smb... erm well if samba is working nice for windows, then your probs should really be mac based. if you're using OSX then you should be able to use samba on the mac. it might depend on how you've set up password encryptino for samba tho.

Ah okay, it didn't recognise cfdisk as a command so we went for plain fdisk and got it sorted. Thanks for your help.

The mac thing. I'm not sure where to even start with this really. The mac kids don't use OSX just yet due to compatibility issues, so they are on OS9.xx.
I'm sure I read in some of the samba documentation that it can be used to share files accross mulitple operating systems, including macO/S - but doesn't say how to go about doing any of this.

Any ideas of where to begin? Maybe any specific samba websites or anything?

Thanks again.
Chris

How about www.samba.org?