TiVo Community Forums Archives - Creating ext2 on larger A drive

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Creating ext2 on larger A drive
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Posted by: seanadams

Sorry if this has been covered - I couldn't find it in the faq/boards:

I just dd'd my factory A drive (14 hour) onto a Quantum lct 40G.
I have stored away my factory A drive in case I screw anything up, and I'm using the new 40G drive in the Tivo.

My question is: how do allocate the ~25G of free space on the new drive as an ext2 partition? NB I am *not* trying to increase video storage on my A drive, I just want a big ext2 partition.

I tried using pdisk (on Dylan's boot disk) to create a new partition (#12) but it thinks the drive is only ~15G, and won't let me allocate anything at the end of the disk. Is this because I used dd to get the partition table onto the drive, instead of creating it from scratch?

Another interesting thing about pdisk is that it doesn't report the total size of my disk in blocks. It only tells me the offset and length of each partition, and it doesn't of course see "free" space at the end o the disk.

Any ideas? What about partitioning tools for MacOS?

Thanks.

Posted by: tcb_only_one

Ok I haven't done this yet, so I can't say this works so its going to be a little sketchy, and I'm going off my bad memory..

I believe mklinux /dev/hdx1 contains partition/size information.
1) So backup each /dev/hdx2-11 seprately instead of just /dev/hdx
1.5) Write down all the block sizes / etc for the old drive
2) pdisk the new drive( there is a way to erase all old info from your mirror or your old disk )
3) recreate all the partitions + your new one
4) restore your images to the individual /dev/hdx2-11 partitions.
5) format /dev/hdx12

The only problem I know of is I don't think Dylan's disk had a mk.ext2 command to format /dev/hdx12

Posted by: jabbera

In order to get the drive to recognize the rest of the space you need to re-init the partiton map. On one virtual terminal run pdisk then list the parition information (l I think). On another one (Alt-F2) run pdisk then type i. You then need to re create the parition information via the listing on virtaul terminal 1. You do this by using the C option. then answering the questions based on the listing.

When entering the label's. If they are more then one word Root 1 Kernel Image 1 MFS application region. They need to be put in quotes!!! "Root 1"

If you use tigers modification of dylans disk it has the utility to make an ext2 file system. Search the forum for single drive upgrade started by tiger.

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I have NOT lost my MIND!! I have it on tape backup somewhere.

[This message has been edited by jabbera (edited 02-20-2001).]

Posted by: Scutter

Just out of curiosity, what do you plan on using the extra space for? Seems like it'll be wasted whether you format it as ext2 or just leave it blank.

FP

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http://tivo.pineaus.com

Posted by: tcb_only_one

quote:
Originally posted by Scutter:
Just out of curiosity, what do you plan on using the extra space for? Seems like it'll be wasted whether you format it as ext2 or just leave it blank.

FP

1) If you are doing alot of hacking, it might be nice to create /dev/hdx12 as bootable to where it restores /dev/hdx2-11 upon seting it to boot drive in the bios..

2) you could put your favorite compilers, ETC on it

3) Some people were thinking about replaying an mpeg over and over on the tivo, this would be a good place for that.

4) Once you get the tivo-nic you could store your mp3's and use it as a file server as well...

Posted by: Scutter

I can think of plenty of things to use it for. I meant *practical* reasons.

quote:
Originally posted by tcb_only_one:
1) If you are doing alot of hacking, it might be nice to create /dev/hdx12 as bootable to where it restores /dev/hdx2-11 upon seting it to boot drive in the bios..

Ok, I can see doing this one, assuming software upgrades don't blow away all extraneous partitions.

quote:

2) you could put your favorite compilers, ETC on it

There isn't already enough room on the existing partitions? How many compilers do you need?

quote:

3) Some people were thinking about replaying an mpeg over and over on the tivo, this would be a good place for that.

Might be handy for a demo, but how often do you need to do this?

quote:

4) Once you get the tivo-nic you could store your mp3's and use it as a file server as well...

Again, why would I use my TiVo for this when there are lots of better, more powerful, (less dangerous to the TiVo) alternatives?

Not trying to downplay your ideas, but as I said at the top, what *practical* reasons are there to do this? Call me kooky, but I prefer to use my TiVo as a PVR and use my workstation for hacking, MP3 serving, etc. Given the number of GSOD reports, stuttering, etc., why put any more load on the TiVo processor than you have to?

FP

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http://tivo.pineaus.com

Posted by: seanadams

quote:
Originally posted by Scutter:
Just out of curiosity, what do you plan on using the extra space for? Seems like it'll be wasted whether you format it as ext2 or just leave it blank.

FP

Heh. Good question. I'm making the ISA adaptor (hope to have it done on Thursday - still waiting for parts) and I'm going to put Ethernet on it. So I don't want to fill up /var or whatever with stuff like web servers, perl, etc. It definitely would suck to use up too much space andpossibly interfere with Tivo's stuff.

[plug] Actually, I'm going to fill up most of the space with mp3 music to be served to my Ethernet mp3 player. If you're interested it's at www.seanadams.com and no, I don't have them ready for sale yet. Need to save up some $$ for parts and assembly.[/plug]

So, looks like the solution is to build the partitions from scratch and dd one slice at a time. I think I can do that. I'll try that tonight, and will report back here.

[This message has been edited by seanadams (edited 02-20-2001).]