Hi everybody, I'm new to Linux, so I wiill be grateful if anybody will help me with next problem:

Yesterday I reinstalled my FC2; I made formatting for all partitions that I have except my /home partition.
Or actually I forgot to mark it that it will stay as /home ext3
So now I can't see my data on former /home althougth it is still on harddisk

Through google I found that I can just make a new partition (like /dev/hda6 or something), and add it to /etc/fstab
but when I try to do that with mkfs.ext3 I get next mesage:

root@localhost root]# mkfs.ext3 /dev/hda6
mke2fs 1.35 (28-Feb-2004)
mkfs.ext3: No such device or address while trying to determine filesystem size
[root@localhost root]#

What does it means (did I have to do something before?)???
If you know what do I have to do more, please tell me. THANKS!!!

HERE are my partitions at the moment (the biggest should be /home):

Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 0+ 12 13- 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 2422 2493 72 578340 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda3 13 1860 1848 14844060 83 Linux
/dev/hda4 1861 2421 561 4506232+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 1861+ 2421 561- 4506201 83 Linux
Warning: start=63 - this looks like a partition rather than
the entire disk. Using fdisk on it is probably meaningless.
[Use the --force option if you really want this]
[root@localhost root]#

Welcome to LQ mike_sh. Tell me if this is accurate: You installed FC2, but during the installation process where it asks if you want to format each partition, you did not format /home because you didn't want to lose your data. Now when you try to use your system, the /home partition is not available, and it is not listed in your fstab.

If that is correct, then it appears that all you may need to do is to add the appropriate partition to the fstab file, but I would recommend against running the mkfs command, because that will reformat the space. In other words, mkfs will not add an entry to your fstab -- that is not the purpose of that command. Please see the man pages for mkfs for more info.

I think the best thing to do would be to describe your partitioning scheme as well as to list the contents of your fstab file. Most likely all you need to do is to edit the fstab with a text editor, then add the "missing" /home partition to it. -- J.W.

If your UID changed between installs, you may need to use the chown command after remounting the /home partition.
chown <username>:<usergroup> /home/<username>
chown <username>:<usergroup> /home/<username>/* -R
chown <username>:<usergroup> /home/<username>/.* -R

Thank you J.W. for help!
I will try now to add my /home to fstab later I'll tell if it worked

Here are my fstab at the moment:
LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext2 defaults 1 2
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hda2 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/cdrom1 /mnt/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0

By the way I have a question about my soundcard detection!
I have ISA soundblaster 16 card, and it's not detected by fedora.
Earlier I found that I have to add some line to modprobe.config file, but now I can't figure out what was that line? can anyone tell me what should I write there.

Thanks for help

It works!!!
I added /home partition to fstab, and now I see my files!
THANKS to J.W.

But I still would like to know about my soundcard detection:
I dont have sndcard detected! I even don't know where and what should I do?

HERE IS my /etc/modprobe.config file: (if it helps to understand my problem)

alias eth0 8139too
alias usb-controller uhci-hcd
alias souncard snd-sb16 0 0

Mike - you can use the lspci command which will list details about your PCI devices. I'd also suggest checking the Search function here at LQ. Soundcard issues are fairly common, and there are numerous threads already that discuss them. I would expect you could find a lot of info there. Good luck with it and I'm glad to hear your fstab problem was resolved. -- J.W.