Linux Format forums

[bigjohn]

Ok, having bought "erindoors" an mp3 player for her birthday, I'd hoped to be able to rip all the stuff under linux, and then she could pick and choose what she wants to TX/upload as and when.

Unfortunately, it would appear that my setup seems to have decided that the partition that my /root, /home and /mp3 partitions (extended) is formated at a "linux extended" partition.

So the XP install can't/won't see it.

Currently the hdd is set up like this.

hda1=XP(primary)
hda2=/boot(primary)
hda3=/swap(primary)
hda4=extended (apparently "linux" extended) into

hda5=/root (logical)
hda6=/user (logical)
hda7=/mp3 (logical)

Now there's no particular reason for it to be set up like that, other than thats how it ended up while I've been learning stuff.

So I thought that what I'd do (open to suggestions of course) is to change the format of the extended hda4 from linux extended to some sort of extended windows fs (fat32 maybe???).

But that, it seems would just screw up all the logical linux partitions (well thats how I understand it, but am not really sure).

My current thinking is too dump everything after the XP/hda1 partition and start from scratch. Which would be something like

hda1=XP (primary)
hda2=mp3 (primary, but formatted as FAT32)
hda3=extended into

hda5=/boot (logical)
hda6=/swap (logical)
hda7=/root (logical)
hda8=/user (logical)

leaving a primary hda4 for anything else (the naming stuff isn't so important?? i.e. instead of hda5,6,7 and 8 - 4, 5, 6 and 7 would do).

I'm presuming that it would probably be easier if the 3rd primary extended should be formatted as some sort of windows format, but I could still use ext3 for the /boot and /swar, and reiserfs for the /root and /user ???

Can anyone see anything wrong in my thinking or have a better suggestion?

Which brings me on to distros. Currently it's gentoo. Though I'm toying with something debian based for a bit of a change.

The problem with that, is that logically, Ubuntu is "flavour of the month", but i can't get my head round using Gnome as a window environment. I'm pretty much exclusively a KDE person.

I understand that theres a kde version of Ubuntu available (Kubuntu???), but as I've not used it, I don't know anything about it i.e. how hard/easy the setup and config might be.

So, I thought that if I installed Knoppix to the hard drive, I'd be able to make use of the excellent hardware detection, then maybe just change the apt-sources list to reflect "proper" debian sources/mirrors for the updates/upgrades/package installs.

The only possible problem with that, being that I understand Knoppix is a mongrel version using Testing and Unstable sources from debian, so would that be likely to cause me any hassle for updates/upgrades ??

Or would you suggest/think that I'd be better off sticking to Gentoo - cos although I'm really rubbish at nearly everything CLI (which is why I've discounted the option of installing "proper" debian), the gentoo install handbook is nice and clear (that's how I got it on my system in the first place) and even a dummy like me can manage it!

Opinions, suggestions and ideas would be much appreciated.

regards

John

p.s. "erindoors" is a teacher (primary school) so as they only have windows at her school, she won't learn linux - hence having to have access to mp3's from windows XP as well as Linux.
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"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away". Tom Waits

[nelz]

You can only have four primary partitions, so number 4 is an extended partition containing other "logical" partitions. This extended partition has nothing to do with Linux extended filesystems.

You certainly don't want to put Linux on a FAT partition, but there are two simple options.

1) Create a new FAT partition, which will be read/writeable by both OSes. then you can rip the MP3s in Linux and save them to the FAT partition, where your wife can read them under Windows.

2) Do the whole job in Linux. Mount the MP3 player as a USB drive, rip the CDs and copy the files to the player.

P.S. A teacher who doesn't want to learn something new, that sounds a worrying concept. What happens when the school starts talking about moving to Linux, as many do? Wouldn't she rather be in a position to know something about it already?
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Unix is user-friendly. It's just very selective about who it's friends are.

[davecs]

Nelz is right. Especially as you are a KDE fan. Open the Audio CD in Konqueror, and provided you have cdparanoia/lame installed, you will see a "virtual" directory, containing the tracks as mp3 files. Mount your mp3 player and open it in another Konqueror window, then just drag and drop! Of course it may take a while because the mp3 files are not really there, they have to be created.

So treat yourself to a nice cup of coffee!
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[fingers99]