I've got a second hard drive (hdc) in my system, and I can't access it.

I've been using Mandrake for quite some time, and decided to try SUSE and Red Hat. Both SUSE and Mandrake automatically set up a subdirectory in /mnt for hdc, but Red Hat didn't.

How do I configure Red Hat 7.2 so I can access my backed up /home directory on hdc?

If this is documented somewhere, please tell me where and I'll find my own answer, but as a Linux newbie I honestly don't have a clue as to which FM I need to R. (There should have been a "T" in there somewhere, but there's not.)

I guess that's my real question. What specific document will tell me how to attach hdc to a directory in /mnt?

Thanks!

you first need to know on what partition of hdc is your backed up /home
and what filesystem it uses - ext2/3 ?
mount -text2/3 /dev/hdcN /mnt/backup
/mnt/backup must exist for this to work, you should figure out on which partition of hdc is the data you need, and the original filesystem.

in redhat to use a partition automatically you have to specify the mount point. i think didn't specify that. you can make a directory for hdc in /mnt mannually and add an entry in /etc/fstab to mount it automatically each time linux boots.

read fstab manual page.

if you want to set your backed home directory as your currect home dierectory use adduser -D option. Read useradd man page

Get into a console screen or a terminal window and run the command
fdisk -l /dev/hdc. This will give you a list of partitions on hdc.

Next run:

mkdir /mnt/home_backup
mount -t ext2 /dev/hdc? /mnt/home_backup

This will create the directory home_backup for the mount point and try to mount the partition /dev/hdc?. Replace the ? with the correct partition number. If the mount command works, you could add a line to your /etc/fstab file to make it easier to mount it.

The line would look something like this:

/dev/hdc? /mnt/home_backup ext2 noauto,defaults 1 2

As before, replace the ? with the correct number. Then all you have to do to mount it is run mount /mnt/home_backup or mount /dev/hdc?.

The fdisk command you recommended gives this output:

Disk /dev/hdc: 240 heads, 63 sectors, 1092 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdc1 * 1 1092 8255488+ c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)

I made myself root, and made the directory. (The second drive is actually the original windows drive that was in the PC.)

mkdir /mnt/windows

The mount command you suggested didn't work though. Here's the command and the output:

[root@localhost blalobw]# mount -t FAT32 /dev/hdc1 /mnt/windows
mount: fs type FAT32 not supported by kernel

I also tried "Win95" and "Win95 FAT32" with no success.

It seems impossable that Red Hat wouldn't provide support for FAT filesystems in thier kernal. What did I do wrong?

Time for a brute force solution. I'm going to use my Demolinux CD to get access to hdc, and email myself a few of the files I need. (I talk to myself too.)

Thanks!

You've almost got it. Run this command as root:

mount -t vfat /dev/hdc1 /mnt/windows

The mount command does not recognize FAT32. Check the man page for mount to see what file system names it recognizes.

Ahhh, that worked perfectly!

Thats what I get for assuming that fdisk was going to give me the file system type in a useful format.

Now all I need to do is to get that /ect/fstab entry made so I don't have to do this manually every time.

Thanks again!

You're welcome.