Partitioning Question

[bodil]

Up until now i have been using widows, but now i finally decided it was time to stop being lazy and get access to all the tools, that wont work on windows. So i have booted this live cd and everything seems pretty impressive (awesome toolbox ). Any way, google told me that there was a partitioning program called parted and that i need to make an "ext2" partition as well as a "linux swap" partition. I have done this and used the install thing (yes it took more than a sec) but it wont boot. i tried playing around with liloconfig, but i dont think thats where the problem is. I think its the partitions:

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32kB 10GB 10GB primary ext2
2 10GB 11GB 1020MB primary linux-swap

Are they supposed to be primary? Any thing else wrong?
Also the "swap" partition is not mounted, even though i reboot (or i cant find it in Konqueror next to the first partition. Im a stupid newb)...

All linux friendly help and suggestions are really appreciated.

NB. all the guides i have found tells you to use partition magic, but i dont pay for software.

[Baxter]

Everything you need is on that cd. for the partition. Type mount that will show you which drive is mounted. it should be mounted at /mnt/hda1
to unmount it use command umount /mnt/hda1/ then start qtparted, command: qtparted. if your swap partion isnt working then most likely you didnt turn it on. use this video tutorial
https://www.offensive-security.com/m.../dualboot.html now after the files are installed you need to mount some things (which is all in the video). On the video theres a command cp /boot/boot/vinuz /mnt/backtrack/boot/ instead use this cp /boot/vinuz /mnt/backtrack/boot/ remember it cause you'l need to use it for the install to work.
Hope this helps ya.

[Baxter]

sorry that was wrong, that command is cp /boot/vmlinuz /mnt/backtrack/boot/

[rumburak514]

If you have only linux on hd then the flag of the first partition has to be set to booteable.
You can check it with fdisk command.
Also useful are small distros Secure Rescue CD and Gparted live CD that you can get from the internet.

[bodil]

Hello and thanks for the replies.
I haven't been home so that why i haven't replied myself.
I used the video and did everything it said i should, but in the end, when i run the lilo -v command i get an error saying:
"Reading boot sector from /dev/hda
Fatal: creat /boot/map~: Read-only file system"

When it says "read only file system" i guess it means the cd-drive? or maybe the first sectors of the hdd are "read only" because it is already mounted. I tried to delete the first partition, but it still doesn't work Also i noticed in the video, that the first cylinder of the first partition was nr2. But actually i don't know if any of this has anything to do with anything, so all help is appreciated. What would be really awesome was if someone would help me live, on gtalk or something similar.

edit:
By the way i also set the boot flag on the partition that has the vmlinuz kernel/file. And i wrote:
cp /boot/vmlinuz /mnt/backtrack/boot/
instead of writining what he wrote

[Baxter]

Boot back into the cd and type nano /etc/lilo.conf in the command prompt and tell us what it says.
also, did you skip a step, or did you get any errors while following that video. i mean any errors besides (Reading boot sector from /dev/hda
Fatal: creat /boot/map~: Read-only file system)

[bodil]

Actually i didnt really look for errors the first time, i was typing while looking at the video and not the console, but im 99% sure i didnt make any errors.

But now i just started over and this time i found a few more errors, heres the first i get when i try to turn swap on. I dont think it is important, but what do i know.

bt ~ # mkswap /dev/hda3
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 1024446 kB
no label, UUID=23b41f93-d5d2-4dfa-8cc2-b2ebb0e18dbf
bt ~ # swapon /dev/hda3
swapon: /dev/hda3: Device or resource busy
bt ~ # umount /dev/hda3
umount: /dev/hda3: not mounted
bt ~ # swapon /dev/hda3
swapon: /dev/hda3: Device or resource busy

Later when he does this "cp --preserve -R /" to list the dirs it gives me an error, i think because its a newer version. This probably doesn't matter anyway.

The CHROOT thing also gives me an error, and thats probably worse:

bt ~ # chroot /mnt/backtrack/ /bin/bas
chroot: cannot run command `/bin/bas': No such file or directory
bt ~ # chroot /mnt/backtrack/ /bin/bash
/dev/pts/1: No such file or directory

Note: i know that "/bin/bas" was probably just a typo, but i typed it just in case. This command gives the video dude a similar error, but he continues any way.

Finally i get this error when executing the "lilo -v" command

Reading boot sector from /dev/hda
Fatal: creat /boot/map~: Read-only file system

This is my partitioning table:

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda2 * 1 125 62968+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 126 2110 1000440 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda4 2111 21487 9766008 83 Linux

Note: i did mke2fs on hda2, mkswap on hda3 (but swapon didnt work) and mkreiserfs on hda4. I used the numbers 2-4 because it's easier, when that also what he does in the video.

And this is my lilo.conf

lba32 # Allow booting past 1024th cylinder with a recent BIOS
boot = /dev/hda
# message = /boot/boot_message.txt
prompt
timeout = 1200
change-rules
reset
vga = 773

# Linux bootable partition config begins
image = /boot/vmlinuz
root = /dev/hda4
label = Linux
read-only
# Linux bootable partition config ends

Ok, think thats all. I hope some one can find something i did wrong with all this info.

[Baxter]

From looking at lilo.conf, i see your trying a single boot. you used hda2/3/4 for BT2. Use hda1/2/3 instead for a single boot. After you made your partitions and wrote them to disk did you get an error asking you to reboot. i had that swapon error first time i tried to install.
(chroot /mnt/backtrack/ /bin/bas) skip that and type (chroot /mnt/backtrack/ /bin/bash) and the (No such file or directory) message is ok, i had that too. everything else looks ok to me.
I not sure if this has anything to do with it but i'v never used hda2/3/4 for a single boot, i use it only for dual boot. maybe that first partition needs to be used,but im not sure cause i'v never tried it.
if none of this works, i'll uninstall my BT2 and see if i can find a real easy way to install it, then post it for ya.

[bodil]

Thanks allot Baxtor. It finally works now. Im not totally sure if it was changing the partition numbers that did the trick, but it works

First i found this nice command in fdisk, " f fix partition order" under the advanced menu part.
then i rebooted, and watched the video, doing all the mounting and fdisk again only (after unmounting a little that is). Then i edited lilo.conf and now no errors, but when i booted without the cd it said that it could mount the "root", after trying linux and other partition types. So the only reason i could think of was that it was using partition 2 (swap) or 4 (non existing) instead of partition 3. So i booted the cd and looked around and found that there was also a lilo.conf located under on the hd3 partition (where the all the files where copied to), and that this one was set with root as hda4 as default. I edited this instead, mounted everything and ran the lilo command and now it works

So thanks allot for all the help Baxtor it would have taken so much longer without that video and without me knowing the (first) mistake he makes in it.

And also thanks to rumburak514 for telling me about the boot flag.