Want to switch my windows file server to linux, need some help

[coolred]

[root@localhost ~]# modprobe ntfs
FATAL: Module ntfs not found.

 

[SleepWalkerX]

You could always try captive-ntfs to mount it at least. Install the rpm and look at the installation notes.

 

[cleverhandle]

What do you get from...

find /lib/modules -name '*ntfs*'

?

 

[coolred]

[root@localhost ~]# find /lib/modules -name '*ntfs*'
/lib/modules/2.6.17-1.2139_FC5/extra/ntfs
/lib/modules/2.6.17-1.2139_FC5/extra/ntfs/ntfs.ko

 

[cleverhandle]

Try a depmod and see if that gets the modprobe working. If not, post the output of uname -a.

 

[coolred]

[root@localhost ~]# depmod
[root@localhost ~]# modprobe ntfs
FATAL: Module ntfs not found.
[root@localhost ~]# uname -a
Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.15-1.2054_FC5 #1 Tue Mar 14 15:48:33 EST 2006 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

 

[cleverhandle]

Your kernel version (2.6.15-1.2054) doesn't match your module version (2.6.17-1.2139). They should be exactly the same. This probably means that Fedora released an updated kernel, and that you haven't updated to it. Use yum to update your kernel.

 

[coolred]

Okay, its been a while since I have gotten to toy with this setup, but heres where I stand. I have a blank 36GB WD raptor, I think I will use this as the OS drive.I have 2 blank 250GB IDE drives and 1 300GB SATA with pretty much all my data on it. I am doing a fresh install of FC 5, how do I set up the partitions so this will all work?

 

[SleepWalkerX]

I would make two partitions on the OS drive, one for root (mountpoint = / ) and one for home (mountpoint is /home ). You can just make a root partition, but if I ever go to another OS I can leave the /home partition the same and carry all my configuration and settings over.

Then you should format both blank ide drives and create mountpoints for them. The mountpoint can be anything. Like /hd1 and /hd2 or /firsthd and /secondhd, it doesn't matter. But make sure to know the actual location of the drives and partitions. An 'fdisk -l' should tell you that. Like if the first ide hard drive was on the primary controller and was the master device, it'd probably be /dev/hda. And the first partition on that drive will be /dev/hda1, the second partition will be /dev/hda2, etc. So if you wanted to mount the first partition on the hard drive on the primary master controller you need to mount /dev/hda1 to the mountpoint /hd1 and if you change the directory to /hd1 it'll go to that partition.

 

[coolred]

What about swap or boot partitions. I tried to allow it to do its thing, and it wants to put the boot loader on one of the IDE drives as opposed to the raptor. If I try to chage it to the raptor, I must screw it up, cause I get an error loading OS after reboot.

 

[coolred]

Screenshot


Still working on the hard drive issues. I am on a fresh install of Fedora Core 5. I think I have yum setup to use rpm.lina.org. To use yum, I go to applications-system tools-software updater???

So anyways, I attached a screenshot of what I think is my hard drive layout. I don't fully understand it, but hopefully someone here does and can explain it to me.

Here is another, if you need to see any more, I can take them. screenshot2

In the second one it appears to me as though it used .1GB of that hard drive for the boot partition, which I assume hols the boot files and bootloader. SO if I were to format that drive for data use, wouldn't it kill those boot files?

 

[cleverhandle]

What gets a little tricky is figuring out how the BIOS labels drives when you're running a bunch of controllers. I would do something like this, but it's not foolproof...

1) Install Fedora with only the Raptor installed on the first SATA port. Leave the other drives disconnected. That means your OS drive should be /dev/sda. Install GRUB to the MBR.

2) Install the two blank IDE drives on the first two PATA ports. Use Fedora's disk management tool to create a logical volume group across those two drives, and a spanned volume over that group.

3) Install the drive with the old data. Copy it onto the the spanned volume.

4) Blank the old data drive now that you've copied it. Run the disk management tool again to add it to the volume with the other two.

As for partitions, most of your big personal files are going to end up on your data drives anyway, so I wouldn't bother creating a separate /home in this case. I would just do

/dev/sda1 - /boot, ext2
/dev/sda2 - swap
/dev/sda3 - /, ext3

 

[coolred]

I will give that a try

 

[coolred]

I got it installed on sda. I have hda initialized, but I can't get hdb initialized. It says its a foreign boot partition and can not be initialized.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: coolred
I have hda initialized, but I can't get hdb initialized.

I don't know what this means. Is this something you see at boot time? Something in a disk manager? Which drive is hdb, one of the blanks? Be more specific...

 

[coolred]

Screenshot

This is what I see in the logical volume managment program in fedora.

I just don't understand how to do anything in linux. I want to learn, but its just so much differant then windows.

 

[cleverhandle]

Probably it's got a Windows Dynamic Disk label on there. Assuming there's nothing on the drive you want to keep, just blank the MBR and partition table:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdb bs=512 count=10

You may need to reboot after that in order for Fedora to recognize the drive.

Originally posted by: coolred
I just don't understand how to do anything in linux. I want to learn, but its just so much differant then windows.

Yes, it's a different operating system and, more importantly, a different culture. If you haven't already, you should read the Unofficial Fedora FAQ - it's one of the better FAQ's out there for any distro IMO.

 

[coolred]

I just don't understand how you remember all these commands, they seem way more complicated then windows.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: coolred
I just don't understand how you remember all these commands, they seem way more complicated then windows.

Did you look up the dd manual page and see what those options do? They all make perfect sense if you understand the command and what you're trying to accomplish. But don't expect to just blindly memorize commands without understanding what they do and why they're designed that way.

 

[Brazen]

personally, I suggest installing webmin. You can get an rpm from the webmin site and then install it with "yum localinstall webmin-blah.rpm"

Webmin makes system management easier. I've used it to set up software raid on drives and then formatting the drives. Then install samba and use samba-swat to configure that. I just installed a home file server myself and it works fantastic, but I used CentOS.

 

[coolred]

Should I be learning as I go along with this file server, or should I learn linux on another system and then once I get the hang of it, move it to my file server?

 

[Brazen]

I would say learn on this computer, and after you've messed it up and figured stuff out, wipe it out and start over with a fresh system for your file server.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: coolred
Should I be learning as I go along with this file server, or should I learn linux on another system and then once I get the hang of it, move it to my file server?

Stick with what you're doing. The only way you learn is to have a meaningful goal and some context. Just installing a machine "in order to learn" but not having anything for it do is pointless, though lots of people do this. You've got to have goals...

 

[Nothinman]

I just don't understand how you remember all these commands, they seem way more complicated then windows.

The same way you remember where everything is in Windows, after you use it for a while they just stick. And some of the time it's easier to find them because you can at least use 'man -k <search term>' on Linux.