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Re: [Sheflug] How To
On Saturday 30 July 2005 14:46, Alec Melling wrote:
> I have read only access to this drive, so basically it is a useless tool.
Not quite. Captive will allow you to use it
http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/
> The crux of my long winded question is: How can I gain access to this drive
> and re-format it in Kubuntu?
OK first you need to know where this device is under Linux?
In /var/log/messages you are after a line
kernel: Attached scsi disk sdx at scsin, channel n, id n, lun n
It is the sdx part that you need. In my case this would typically be sda
Now we can start to partition
fdisk /dev/sda
then follow the instructions, to wipe out all your data and install a new
system.
I am unsure, but you may need to run syslinux to make the bootable drive. This
is the case for USB pendrives although this also relies on your BIOS being
able to boot off USB.
> A supplementary question is that given that this drive will be Linux only
> from now on, what would be the best file system to format it in?
I am tempted to say FAT.
Let me clarify and hopefully someone else will either confirm or give a better
answer.
If it is FAT, then it can be used by both Windows and Linux systems. You never
know if you need to use it on another Windows computer.
For Linux only, I would go with ext3
This is a journaled system (I do wish the people who had first coined that
word had been UK English and we could have spelt it journalled).
This means that it uses journals to apply changes to the data and so
theoretically can recover from an unexpected power down.
Why not ReiserFS (Journaled system favoured by SuSE) Nice system, but when you
really need a journaled system is when something goes wrong. I have not found
many recovery tools, whereas ext3 can if nothing else be converted back to an
ext2 system.
JFS and XFS for similar reasons. These are from IBM and SGI respectively.
ext2 would be my second Linux only option. Nice set of ext2fs utilities
available to dump the whole system for forensics if needed. ext2 can also be
read as a read-only device from Windows with Explore2fs
http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/explore2fs.htm
The cluster file systems are Ok if you are clustering, but on a USB drive I
guess not. So that rules out CXFS, Veritas CS, SANergy, GPFS, Sistina GFS,
GFS, GFS (GFS.org), Fusion and PVFS
LVM is fun to play with if you have multiples, but again I guess not with UBS.
Cryptoloop, StegFS and tcfs are all used for hiding data. They have a slight
performance hit and I guess most of us do not have anything that vital to
hide.
Have I missed anything?
Has anyone any better suggestions or experience?
John
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