Partitioning a flash card
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This is an article from the old midgard wiki that hasn't yet been fully updated for this wiki, please update it. Please see the talk page for discussion. |
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WARNING: Partitioning your flash card will delete all data of the card, so be sure to back up any important data to a computer or another flash card.
Note: As of 4-28-2008 Penguinbait has made a deb package that automates all of this for you. See http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19639 and http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20534
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Get root access
See root access.
Install the necessary packages and create partitions
Note: on the N800 and N810 the filesystem mounted under /media/mmc1 is the external media card and the internal card is mounted under /media/mmc2. The device that is mounted under /media/mmc1 is /dev/mmcblk1 and not mmcblk0 that is mounted under /media/mmc2. If you plan to format the external media card replace mmcblk0p with mmcblk1p.
In Xterm on your tablet, as root, run:
apt-get install e2fsprogs umount /media/mmc1 umount /media/mmc2 sfdisk /dev/mmcblk0 /dev/mmcblk0p1:1,15000,6 /dev/mmcblk0p2:15001,, /dev/mmcblk0p3: /dev/mmcblk0p4:
This will create two partitions in a 1GB flash card: the first one is VFAT (that's what number 6 means), and the second one is LINUX_83. The size of the first one is almost 480MB (that's the meaning of the 15000), and the second one is sized till the end of the card (that's what ,, means). Partitions three and four are empty. You may calculate your partitions based on my description, or read more about sfdisk. (Actually 15000 means cylinders, being each one of 32KB. So that 15000 cylinder x 32 KB/cylinder = 480MB. This means that 30000 cylinder x 32 KB/cylinder = 960MB). It will probably be easier to copy the example and just modify it slightly.
Format the partitions
Type as root:
mkdosfs /dev/mmcblk0p1 shutdown -r now
After it reboots, then open Xterm and, as root, run:
mke2fs /dev/mmcblk0p2 shutdown -r now
Mounting the partitions
The VFAT partition will be mounted by the system automagically at start-up. To mount the EXT2 partition we need to load the kernel modules, so open Xterm and, as root, type:
insmod /mnt/initfs/lib/modules/$(uname -r)/mbcache.ko insmod /mnt/initfs/lib/modules/$(uname -r)/ext2.ko