Hi,

I'm searching for a solution to format multiple usb sticks and create 2 new partitions.
1 partition have to be read only.

I was searching for fdisk, but this program have an own menu so I can't put this in a bash script to run automatically.

Does anybody know howto to do this?

Many thanks in advance.

Kind regards,

You can edit the partition table using fdisk's command line arguments, check the man page of fdisk for more information.

As for making one partition read-only, I don't believe that is possible in the partition table. Or at least, I have never heard of that.

Thanks for your answer.

I tried fdisk, but this didn't worked. It keep showing fdísk's own menu.

Kind regards,

@activeq: what exactly did you do? which commands?

fdisk -d -o -w /dev/hda2

But I'll guess this will be wrong

You may find sfdisk easier to use for running from a script.

The 'parted --script' command allows you to partition disks with single line commands. Here's an example bash script:


#!/bin/sh

echo "WANRNING! This CF Utility will format /dev/sda"
echo ""
echo "Detecting /dev/sda1"
echo ""
fdisk -l
echo ""
echo "Press any key if detected else Ctrl-C..."
read junk
echo "Formatting /dev/sda1"
echo ""
sleep 1
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=8k count=1
sleep 1
parted --script /dev/sda mklabel msdos
parted --script /dev/sda mkpart primary ext2 0 122
parted --script /dev/sda mkpart primary ext2 122 128
parted --script /dev/sda mkfs 1 ext2
parted --script /dev/sda mkfs 2 ext2
parted --script /dev/sda set 1 boot on
parted --script /dev/sda print
sleep 5
mkfs.ext2 -b 1024 /dev/sda1
mkfs.ext2 -b 1024 /dev/sda2

Sorry...but this script isn't working on my Suse system nor Ubuntu.

I've checked the parted command and this is the command I have to go for, but the strange thing is, is that my 2 systems keep crying that /dev/sda is in use and can't be formated, set partitions or whatever.

Any idea how to overcome this?

Thanks in advance.

Are you sure it isn't mounted?
^should not give lines talking about sda; if it does,
and then re-try.

EDIT: out of curiosity, because I haven't used parted, what's the difference between

Code:

parted --script /dev/sda mkfs 1 ext2
parted --script /dev/sda mkfs 2 ext2

and

Code:

mkfs.ext2 -b 1024 /dev/sda1
mkfs.ext2 -b 1024 /dev/sda2

or rather why do you run those both? Isn't parted making the filesystems, or what's that mkfs command in it - why do you have to run mkfs.ext2 after that again?

With some more testing, i get it partically done.

this is what i do:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=8k count=1
parted -s /dev/sda mklabel msdos
parted -s /dev/sda mkpart primary fat32 0 100
parted -s /dev/sda mkpart primary fat32 100 500
parted -s /dev/sda mkfs 1 fat32
parted -s /dev/sda mkfs 2 fat32
parted -s /dev/sda set 1 boot on
parted -s /dev/sda print

This will work for Linux. I'll see 2 partitions.But if i put the same disk to a Windows machine, I only see one single drive which is the one i set 'boot on'.

I figured out that both partitions use id 'c'. and mkfs 2 isn't accessible in Windows.

How can I set id to 'd' so Windows will see both of my partitions?

Please see output below fdisk -l and note ID sda1 and sda2:

nl1email:~ # fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 30.7 GB, 30750031872 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3738 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 131 1052226 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda2 * 132 3738 28973227+ 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sda: 519 MB, 519831552 bytes
16 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1023 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 992 * 512 = 507904 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 197 97656 b W95 FAT32
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(12, 40, 13) logical=(196, 14, 13)
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 197 886 341797 b W95 FAT32
Partition 2 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
phys=(12, 40, 14) logical=(196, 14, 14)
Partition 2 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(54, 180, 57) logical=(885, 15, 57)
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
nl1email:~ #

As far as I know, Windows only looks at the first partition on removable USB devices. When I was still using Windows on my desktop, I could never find a way for it to recognize more than one partition on a removable device. Perhaps there is some trick to it.

That's another reason why I don't use Windows - it does not recognize the second partition on an USB pendrive. Let me repeat that. Windows will not recognize a second partition on a USB pendrive. Which makes sense because if you have many pendrives with many partitions then you will run out of alphabet letters for the 'drive letter'. I always found that so ridiculous.

Yes...this will be the thing because the second partition was recognized in device manager, but not in Explorer.

Unfortunatly 99% of our costumers use Windows, so automatically formatting and partitioning in Linux for USB pen drives is not possible :-(

Thanks for all your help. Again learned something.

One recall on your post ramram29.

We use software which format the pendrives into two partitions. Windows is recognize them as 2 different drives!!

If I can manage that with fdisk or parted, this would be great.

We copy alott of data to thousands of disks everyday. duplicating one pendrive to 32 others at ones. We use Windows for this at the moment, but Windows keeps losing its USB driver. have to reboot everytime to be recognized. Bcause I'm a big Linux fan, I would like to run the procedure with a script.

But....the last thing I need to do, I can't get it done. That is partitioning a pen drive in two partitions so Windows will recognize the two partitions a two drives and not 1.

pppffff

I don't think that Windows detects it as two disks. It'll only recognise the first partition.


reason for edit: tryping erorts.