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From: ching@brahms.amd.com (Mike Ching)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: mkfs glitch in 1.5.10
Message-ID: <1991Feb26.015027.18712@amd.com>
Date: 26 Feb 91 01:50:27 GMT
References: <45603@nigel.ee.udel.edu> <cechew.667449546@sol1>
Sender: usenet@amd.com (NNTP Posting)
Organization: Advanced Micro Devices; Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 26

In article <cechew.667449546@sol1> cechew@sol1.cs.monash.edu.au (Earl Chew) writes:
>danson@udel.edu (Douglas Anson) writes:
>>with a file system made on my 2nd harddrive.  However, my problem
>>is that when I return to DOS, my 2nd hard drive is still visible to
>>DOS.  
>
>>Has anyone else encountered this problem?  Any crafty solutions?
>>BTW, I use a 286 with 4Meg RAM...1.5.10...
>
>I think that the problem is that mkfs *doesn't* write to the first kb
>(bootblock) of the named medium. This leaves your old partition table intact so
>DOS quite cheerfully thinks that you still have a valid file system. To solve
>this problem try:
>
>	dd if=/etc/termcap of=/dev/hd6 bs=512 count=1
>
>This will write the first 512 bytes of /etc/termcap (pick any other rubbish
>file you want) over the partition table of hd6.
>

If you haven't used fdisk to make the partition type MINIX, then that is
what you should do to make the partition invisible to DOS. Fdisk under
DOS can't do this so you can change it under MINIX or compile the MINIX fdisk
under DOS.

Mike Ching


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