Second hard disk working?

[buildingstoat]

Hello,

I have what is probably a very simple problem. I have been using Linux in a very superficial way for some years, mostly Fedora Core 6 and SuSE 10.1. I like it because it usually 'just works'. A result of this is that I have learned very little about what goes on under the bonnet. The situation is this:

I have 2 hard disks One has SuSE and XP dual boot (hda), the other Fedora (hdb). I have never been able to get SuSE to see anything on hdb or Fedora anything on hda. When I want to swap from one to the other I change the boot order in the BIOS and I have used a USB stick for the small amount of data I swap. This is cack-handed but i've got by. Now I really need to be able to transfer some big chunks of data from one system to another.

Having read some posts here I have done this:

SUSEhome:/home/nick # fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 82.3 GB, 82348277760 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10011 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 5603 45006066 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda2 * 5604 7293 13574925 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 9829 10011 1469947+ 5 Extended
/dev/hda4 7294 9828 20362387+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda5 9829 10011 1469916 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/hdb: 82.3 GB, 82348277760 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10011 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hdb2 14 10011 80308935 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hdb3 10012 10012 0 e W95 FAT16 (LBA)


I think I might need to add something to /etc/fstab but I am not quite sure if this is so and what that should be. I am too nervous to just try it and see on this machine - data loss would be a major headache!

Any help gratefullly received. Thanks

[Jonathan183]

I would not try mounting the LVM stuff but you should be ok to mount the ext3 partition. If you just want to do a one off mount this can be done quite easily ... adding entries to fstab make the mount available each time you start Linux.

Looking at the disc structure i'd mount sda from fedora ... I'd use your SUSE home area to transfer information.

If you want to go down this route I suggest from SUSE ... post output of

cat /etc/fstab

Then start Fedora and post output of

fdisk -l

just want to double check references before posting method of mounting.

[buildingstoat]

Here is the first bit

SUSEhome:/home/nick # cat /etc/fstab
/dev/hda2 / reiserfs acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/hda4 /home reiserfs acl,user_xattr 1 2
/dev/hda1 /windows/C vfat users,gid=users,umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0
/dev/hda5 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap swap defaults 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs noauto 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto noauto,user,sync 0 0

However, this is where the story gets a little more complicated. What has belatedly got me off my arse to get this sorted out is a minor disaster in Fedora. All had been going wonderfully for ages when Firefox started crashing if asked to load certain pages. I thought I'd try updating it as I hadn't for a while then thought why not do a general update. Bad move. Now it won't boot Fedora at all! Just get GRUB.. and nothing.

Before I start doing anything about that I thought I should try and rescue the contents of my fedora /home folder. Ah well...........

[Jonathan183]

It may still be possible to mount the lvm ... I don't use lvm at all so can't help much on this. It may be something which can be done through Yast for example.

I'd hang fire on doing anything too drastic and wait for someone else to come back who has lvm experience.
Ed: this may be of use.

[buildingstoat]

Thanks for the replies and the link. I don't really understand this lvm stuff at all but I'll have a go at mounting it as suggested in thel linked text and maybe let you know how it goes