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I repartitioned a 120g drive w/Mepis 7.0 installed to 8 partitions. sda2 is /, sda3 is swap (1gig), sda4 is the extended, sda5 is home, & sda6.7.8 are for data, video, audio, etc. sda1 is unused ext3 that I would like to use for grub but thats another hurdle for me. Originally everything was installed to / and used the entire drive; after repartitioning I copied /home/user from / to /mnt/sda5/home/user, I left / at sda2, I deleted winXP from sda1 and reformatted to ext3 and left empty for Grub, I created 1gig swap on sda3, and used sda4 for extended. sda6,sda7,&sda8 are empty until I begin to restucture /mnt/sda5/home/user and move files from there to the appropriate partitions. After doing all this I can only login as root; when I try to login as user I get an error message that says "could not start kstartupconfig.". I think this happened after I copied the /home/user files from / to /mnt/sda5/home/user and then then deleted all the files in /home/user. I have a symlink in /home to /mnt/sda5/home at present. I need some pointers to fix this and set things up correctly. Thanks, cowonjolt

Hi cowonjolt,
This is not at all what you want to hear, I'm sure, but my advice: reinstall. Choose the custom install option and select the appropriate partitions (root, swap, home) and set up whatever else you want after the install. Good luck to you.

Morux, reinstall is a certain option at last resort but I believe my bork is fixable. I am currently running on a spare 20gig drive with a fresh & updated 7.0 install that uses the entire drive. I'm holding off a bit because I have simular problems on 2 seperate drives I have attempted to partition. One is the 120gig and the other is a 75gig. On the 120g I cannot now log in as user but on the 75g I can log in as either one (user or root); however on both of those drives if I click the (home) icon I get an error message that is as follows... file:///home/user Does Not Exist. BUT if I click the arrow to go up one level to / I can simply click on /home and then /user(substitute my home name) and my home with desktop, files, and all is right there but if I attempt to install a downloaded tar or deb I get the error message again that it does not exist even though it does exist. I maybe should have posted this to Admin as I think SB can figure this out in no time. Part of my problem may also reside in permissions & fstab but I just don't grasp it well enough to figure it out yet. I have been using Mepis since Dec of 2004 but am often the poor bloke that takes 3 months to figure out problems that only actually take minutes to fix. I'm ashamed to say I usually learn enough to get up and running then go on for months w/o troubles till I try something new and bork things again and then spend weeks and months learning and relearning what I forgot to fix things again. I do it though because I am still so grateful that Linux set me free from windows it's worth it. I am proud to announce that I have not used windows or windows related since I first installed Mepis in 2004. Thanks for all the help. cowonjolt

Good enough. Hope you get it worked out w/o reinstall. If you do, post back here what you did.

cowonjolt wrote:I repartitioned a 120g drive w/Mepis 7.0 installed to 8 partitions. sda2 is /, sda3 is swap (1gig), sda4 is the extended, sda5 is home, & sda6.7.8 are for data, video, audio, etc. sda1 is unused ext3 that I would like to use for grub but thats another hurdle for me. Originally everything was installed to / and used the entire drive; after repartitioning I copied /home/user from / to /mnt/sda5/home/user, I left / at sda2, I deleted winXP from sda1 and reformatted to ext3 and left empty for Grub, I created 1gig swap on sda3, and used sda4 for extended. sda6,sda7,&sda8 are empty until I begin to restucture /mnt/sda5/home/user and move files from there to the appropriate partitions. After doing all this I can only login as root; when I try to login as user I get an error message that says "could not start kstartupconfig.". I think this happened after I copied the /home/user files from / to /mnt/sda5/home/user and then then deleted all the files in /home/user. I have a symlink in /home to /mnt/sda5/home at present. I need some pointers to fix this and set things up correctly. Thanks, cowonjolt

Hi, cowonjolt.
And welcome to SBLinux.org!

Make sure you change your /etc/fstab file so that the partition with your /home/user directory aotomatically mounts at boot. Here is an example from the top section of my Mepis /etc/fstab:

Code: Select all

# Pluggable devices are handled by uDev, they are not in fstab
/dev/sda3 / ext3 defaults,noatime 1 1
/dev/sdc2 swap swap sw,pri=1 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devmode=0666 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0622 0 0
none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
/dev/sda6 /mnt/sda6 ext3 defaults,noatime 1 2
# ########### data partitions #############
# ######## sda data partitions SATA1
/dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1 ext2 auto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/sda5 /mnt/sda5 ext3 auto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/sda13 /mnt/sda13 ext3 auto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/sda14 /mnt/sda14 ext3 auto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/sda15 /mnt/sda15 ext3 auto,users,exec 0 0
# ######## sdb data disk SATA2
---and so on ......


I then have a symlink from the appropriate subdirectory on /mnt/sda6 to /home/silverbear in the Mepis root partition. But that /mnt/sda6 is already mounted and has the filesystem checked before I try to log in as silverbear.

Post back if this still doesn't work for you.

SilverBear

Silverbear, Finally managed to get things working utilizing the tips here, at mepislovers, and in your and others guides. My fstab is set up now to auto mount my 120g and a 75g drive that are basically partitioned to 16 varied partitions; I ended up borking my / to the point that I took Morux advise and reinstalled 7.0 from the cd. I'm relieved though because I lost no data, audio, video, or anything as I was able to safely move all keepers to seperate partitions before I reformatted my / partition. This has kept me busy though and I have not had any spare time since my last post till now because I had ALOT of varied data all jumbled together between root & home and all was unorganized. I now have documents on a partition, audio & video on another, iso's & torrents on another, etc. I really like it as I am able to manage all my data much better and I can even find what I'm looking for now.
At present I'm trying to fully understand how to manage permissions and also the symlinks as many of my problems were caused by my shortcomings in these two things. I had links going to wrong places as well as to non-existant places and mixed permissions making my waters muddy as well. I have not sym linked anything yet and won't till I fully "get it"; and all permissions are set to the defaults right now as well. Thanks to everyone for all the help!, your tips, tricks, and imput are now and always greatly appreciated. cowonjolt