On this page I have put some information that I have found useful for sorting out problems:
Formatting Devices
When formatting flash drives I use 'ext2' to avoid too many writes to a given part of the drive.
| Login | myid@suse111:~> su root Password: |
| find device id | suse111:/home/martin # df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sdb2 20641788 11691664 7901484 60% / udev 1671612 1068 1670544 1% /dev /dev/sdb3 217642344 70041476 136544936 34% /home /dev/sdg1 7807772 4 7807768 1% /media/disk |
| unmount | suse111:/home/martin # umount /media/disk |
| format | suse111:/home/martin # mke2fs /dev/sdg1 |
Mounting Devices
On my system the following devices are used (this will be different for other systems):
/dev/sda2 -- ntfs partition
/dev/sdb2 -- ext3 system partition
/dev/sdb3 -- ext3 home partition
/dev/sdc -- usb card device
/dev/sdd -- usb card device
/dev/sde -- usb card device - sd cards
/dev/sdf -- usb card device
/dev/sr0 -- cd/dvd drive
for more information for your system try running:
fdisk -l
or see the /etc/fstab file which is a text file.
Once you know the device name you can then mount the device by associating it with a disk file as follows:
| mount /dev/sdb2 /mnt mount /dev/sdb3 /mnt/home mount -t vfat /dev/sde /mnt/sd |
system partition user partition sd card device |
we can also mount network devices as follows:
mount.cifs //192.168.0.4 /mnt/buffalo -o username=guest
Repairing File systems
Since file systems cannot be repaired from a running system you will probably need to run the rescue system. To do this put your SUSE disc into the disc drive and boot up your system, select 'rescue system' from the menu. This will take you into the command line but the disc partitions will not necessarily be mounted.
First we need to gather information about the disc, it really helps to run these commands when you first install the operating system, then you will have somthing to compare with if things go wrong:
| command | |
|---|---|
| whole disk | fdisk -l |
| vi /etc/fstab | |
| sfdisk -d /dev/sdb > /tmp/partition.txt | |
| individual ext2 or ext3 partition | /sbin/dumpe2fs /dev/sdb3 | more |
/sbin/e2fsck -n /dev/sdb3 or /sbin/fsck.ext2 -n -f /dev/sdb3 |
|
I have more information with examples of the output on this page.
Checking logs
In order to check the logs from the command line try:
| vi /var/log/boot.msg vi /var/log/messages |
boot logs messages |
Changing file permissions
Giving user write access after restoring from DVD
chmod o+w * -R
Commands
| command | description |
|---|---|
| cd | change directory |
| rm -R * | delete resursivly (warning - deletes entire contents of current directory and subdirectories) |
| rd | remove directory (if empty) |
