Reusing Debian partition on SAM440ep

I would like to reuse the Debian partitition, which i never used anyway.
How can i do this? Problem is i forgot my user password.
I got my system from I.M.M informatique and never changed that password , but contact with I.M.M failed. I remember it was in a note on the WB, but alas, lost it during different updates.

Re use it for what AmigaOS? Or Linux?

If you are going to use it for AmigaOS,
Go to Media Toolbox, make partition auto mount, select file system and save, the partition should pop up on the desktop, you can now format it.
If the drive has MBR partition table you need to repartition the drive.

For Linux just pop in the installation CD.
Partitions are numbered like this for hard drives whit MBR
Hda1 hardrive a, primary partition 1
Hda5 hardrive a, first extended partition (5)
Hda6 hardrive a, second extended partitions (6)

hda4 is where all the extened partitons are located.
Hda2 to hda3 is are all primary partitions but never in use (Windows does not support it)

Hard drives whit RDB there are no primary or secondary partitions, so s are just numbered.
hda1 is 1, hda2 is 2, hda3 is 3 etc.

AmigaOS does not detect MBR partitions unless its on USB, you can how ever download some tools from OS4Depot.net that will dump the partition table, it should generate a mount list, mount lists are dangers because if you reparation, the mount list does not update so wrong start end blocks are defined, resulting in corrupted data.

@LiveForIt

Quote:that's my case, I want to split up the partition in a cache (that i was not able to create in one of the OS4. updates, i don't remember which)
and in a backup partition for now.

Quote:

I did read your second advice (maybe wrongly) as above. Can you clarify what you mean with 'reparation' here?

Sorry spelling error, “repartition”

http://os4depot.net/index.php?functio ... ity/hardware/mountdos.lha

@LiveForIt
Thanks again.

I verified with toolbox whatpartitions were used (by Debian?)
I had
Name Size FileSystem Bootable?
SWAP 1.025 GB SWAP
dhx 18.626 GB LNX\00 yes
dhx 1.863 GB SWP\00
dhx 46.648 GB LNX\00

As far as i can see, mountdos is of no use here (no corresponding Amiga filesystem)
I guess using only Media Toolbox is what i have to do.
Can adjacent partitions be collapsed into one partition?

What happens, with the highlighted partition when you click 'remove partition' (dutch: partitie verwijderen)

No all you need to do is change the filesystem in the mount list that’s is if you have MBR on your hard drive.

Using media toolbox i have redefined the names of the three Linux partitions (which all had dhx as name) to dhx1 dhx2 and dU2

I changed the filesystemof the last one to SFS\00 bmocksize 1024 , i left buffers to 30 as before. I noted that for my normal amiga partitions this was set to 600. Is this recommended?

I suppose i now have to partition DU2 which is present when i use the info command (not a DOS drive)

As i am going to use DU2 as a backup partitition i have second thoughts on the use of SFS. Shouldn't i use FFS which has better recovery tools?

Now as formatting goes, 'format' does not specify a possibility to fromat a drive as SFS

I downloaded SFS from OS4Depot which comes with SFSformat and an SFSformat.txt stating:
Quote:


I guess i can use the OS4.1 system/format as well?

It still seems strange to me that one should first format as FFS or OFS?
Do i read this correctly? If yes are both equivalent choices?

@JoshDuchIt:

It is not your choice of formatting program which determines which filesystem you use.

The filesystem is decided when you set it for the partition inside Media Toolbox, i.e. for your DU2 partition, you set it to SFS\00 there, and that is what it will be formatted as, whether you use SFSFormat or System/Format. Just use WB's Format (after rebooting, of course, but Media Toolbox will also tell you that when you exit it after the changes). And just use quick format. There is never any reason to do a full format on a modern (i.e. less than 15 years old) hard drive.

BTW, SFS must be set to 512 bytes blocksize. Nothing else is supported, and even if you can set it to other values, it is at best of no advantage. As for buffers, I usually set all my partitions to 1000. 30 is way too low, at least.

So, to recap, the sequence of actions is:

In Media Toolbox, change the filesystem of the partition to SFS and set blocksize etc. Also make sure it is set as AutoMount.

On the main page of Media Toolbox, save the changes to the drive.

Exit Media Toolbox, it will prompt you to reboot, so do that.

When WB comes up, your new (changed) partition will show up as Not a DOS disk. Format it - the easiest way IMHO is rightclicking on the disk icon and selecting the Format context menu item. Give it a name, deselect Trashcan (unless you actually want one ...) and click Quick Format.

That's it, your partition should now be ready for use with SFS as filesystem.

Best regards,

Niels

P.S. You have a point about using FFS for a backup partition, though, but you will have to accept it being a bit slower. If it is problematic, you could try experimenting with fs_set_flush_strategy and fs_plugin_cache. Documentation is available.

Hi Niels,
thanks for your info.
About the 'buffers' you can set, where do they physically appear ? Do they take a part of the partition? Of ram: ? what size is 1 buffer?
If they are a reserved part of the partition i guess changing them after you have allready used the partition and saved files to it, will generate trouble ?


Second question: i noted i have a SWAP partition with SWAP filesystem.
I remember i was not aware of this when installing one of the updates explicitly asking for it. I may have given the wrong response then.
Maybe the update did find it or not. How can i know? If not, how can i make it known to the OS?

@JoDuchit

BUffers are in ram, they aren't part of the partition, having more buffers speeds up disk access, considerably

I think size wise one buffer = one block but I may be wrong about that.

AS Niels says 30 is way too low for a HD (more like the amount for a floppy) most of mine are 600 IIRC.


As to the swap I'm reasonably sure that if it's setup correctly, the OS will just find it.

Quote:Yes, that's my understanding as well. It does need the AutoMount flag set, though, IIRC. Block size and buffers are irrelevant, however, as the kernel has its own way of accessing it.


Best regards,

Niels

@nbache &broadblues
Ok, good to have 'SWAP probably working' confirmed

It is set to automount & 4096 blocksize