Wow,
I am currently using Mandrake 9.2 RC2 download addition, I was having many problems, so I decided to down load SuSE and give that a try, I download the whole ftp file, it is sitting in /home right now. I created a new partition sda/8 to put it on. I also created a partition on hda/5 for back ups. I have done a full backup onto a windows box, that was my first problem, the backdrake only sees my root user, I had to add the home files of the other users to back them up, when I started the other users were listed, now they are not. So anyway I am unable to mount the new partitions, because they are never created, it seems that diskdrake cannot create the partitions and when I mount them they stay unmounted, in both diskdrake, and bash. Diskdrake asked me if I wanted to add the partitions to fstab, I said yes, big mistake, so now I know if I ever turn off this machine it won't reboot, been there, done that, so now I need to edit fstab, I find emacs in the directory, and it says it isn't installed, so I go to /usr/bin find emacs, run it, but it won't let me open anything that isn't in my home dir. So I open a terminal, su, type emacs, bash never heard of it, so I try vi, success, but vi won't let me open anything not in my /home dir., but I'm running in root? So run emacs from the terminal with the same result. So now I have a bad fstab that I cannot edit, hence I cannot shutdown and expect mandrake to reboot. Another problem I have is that I have is that mandrake update cannot find any updates. On the whole 9.2 is a lot better than 9.1, which would crash everytime a samba share was cut off by a firewall on the windows box. I think I will see if bash knows what fdisk is and see if I can format these partitions, if not then I will boot up with Yast and see if i can install SuSE off the mandrake /home, or maybe see if Knoppix works on this machine. Sorry this has turned into a vent. Any suggestions are most welcomed, I am not planning on rebooting until Saturday.

Paul

This is what happened so far. I ran fdisk and it said that the new partitions were correctly formatted, so the problem is that for some reason I cannot mount them. I decided to try a different way to edit fstab, I opened a terminal, su'ed to root, ran Nautilus from the shell, I love those error statements, went to /ect/fstab tried to open with emacs, that failed, opened with vi, edited it but was unable to save, so I opened with kwrite, edited and saved and hopefully it will reboot. Then I did a bunch more reading, found a post about a site called easy Urpmi, and tried to use it to update my system, everything worked except the update part, no updates found, so I decided that maybe the proper config was now done so that Mandrake update would now work, I tried it and it did. So now I have an updated system. I went back to diskdrake but it won't run just crashed, It is probably a synchronization problem caused by the updates, In 9.1 I fixed these with Linuxconfig but it is not to be found on 9.2. Hmm, well anyway I haven't tried to mount with bash yet, I will try that later.
Paul

It looks like nobody has any suggestions or they just hate my writing so I am going to talk myself though it.
The system update fixed the backup program so I did a full backup again.
I tried mounting the partitions in bash but it said they didn't exist, so I went back into diskdrake it didn't crash this time, deleted the partitions, recreated them one at a time, exiting after formatting, then went back in to mount them, one at a time and succeeded. When I went to copy the folder in my home directory to the new mounted partition it said there was not enough room, I checked the size /mnt and it was 4.1 gig, somehow it lost 4 gig, I checked the other partition and it lost 4 gig too. I deleted them in disgust but I think I will try to recreate them, remount them and shut it down for the night, if it works I will wonder if reboots are necessary.

Paul

Well,
Mandrake wouldn't boot this morning, sda8 was not a valid partition, went to a shell tried to edit fstab, emacs not found, vi would not write the edited file, went to fdisk, partition was fine, deleted, recreated, reboot, still won't work. Booted up using knoppix disk, found that it would not under any circumstances write to the fstab of the mandrake partition. rebooted, tried the rescue disk, emacs still down, vi still useless, rebooted, went to a shell, edited fstab in vi, finally it would write, reboot, Mandrake booted fine but back to square 1. The partition on hda is there, will mount but I can only use 26MB of the 4 gigs. I am wondering if mandrake knows I want to try another distro? I am going to try the install anyway, maybe something will work right.

Take a gamble. Is your data (the stuff you really need) backed up? Sounds like it is.

Stop futzin. Have a beer, then do a clean install. Your important stuff is already backed up, right?

No?

Uh oh.

Yes, I have backuped multiple times on multiple places, one of the partitions was to have a local place to do daily backups. This is my clean install, my last one had a lot of kernel panics.

Success, I shutdown, ran Ranish, reformatted the partition that I had deleted in fdisk, it was still there, rebooted into mandrake, unmounted the partition that worked, deleted both folders from /mnt and remounted them. Everything looks good now. Copied the suse folder to the new partition. I will uninstall and reinstall emacs, maybe that will make it work, sounds like windows to me, then I will shut down, install SuSE, and maybe this will be the last time I post using Mandrake.

Paul