Thursday, January 10, 2013

How can I tell if my Linux install is in its own partition?

Q. I have a Gateway netbook with Windows 7 starter. I installed the Ubuntu 10 version of Linux. But I don't think it installed on it's its own partition, because it never asked me about the size or anything of a partition or which partition to use. So, I followed some instructions on the internet to put Linux on its own partition, but how do I know its really on there?

A. It did, but if it will make you feel better, do this:

Boot into Linux.
Open a console shell
Type 'df -h'

The partitions will be displayed. The information on the right will tell you the mount point. The one marked '/host' will be the windows partition. On the left the host partition will be /dev/sda1. All the rest are you Linux partitions.

If you want to know more about /dev/sda1, type 'fdisk -l' (be careful with fdisk).

How do you determine what Linux file system your using?
Q. When you log onto a Linux system and get to the command prompt, how can you determine which of the many file systems supported in Linux you are using? Is there a command that will identify it?

A. Use fsck with the N option which just show what would have been done, but also show you what type of filesystem it is.

fsck -N /dev/(device-name)

e.g.

fsck -N /dev/hdc2

The 'mount' command wont help if the filesystem isn't mounted, and looking in /etc/fstab wont help because you cant be sure that information can be trusted.

How can i access a RAID partition from Linux?
Q. I am playing around with Mandriva, a distribution of Linux. I have windows installed on a separate RAID 0+1 setup and i want to access my files from Mandriva. How can i do this? I'm reading about samba shares but i'm not so sure I understand. Is there a directory i can just type in to access my windows partition?

A. Just mount the partition.




Powered by Yahoo! Answers

No comments:

Post a Comment