Once again confused on arch

[Pretzel]

Hello,

I am once again confused during my archlinux install, because i'm trying to mount to the hard drive, and it says that the SDA partition (which is empty because i deleted its contents) is read only. What can I do about this?

[Hamosch]

how are you trying to mount it?

 

you are saying 

sda

 that is your drive,

sda1, sda2.... sdaN

are your partitions

 

You can not mount a hard drive, only a partition. Don't know if you did this correctly because you didn't give any more info so just assuming here.

[Pretzel]

1 minute ago, Hamosch said:

how are you trying to mount it?

 

you are saying 

sda

 that is your drive,

sda1, sda2.... sdaN

are your partitions

 

You can not mount a hard drive, only a partition. Don't know if you did this correctly because you didn't give any more info so just assuming here.

there are no partitions and the drive is read only, how would i create a partition and make the drive writable?

[Pretzel]

1 minute ago, Pretzel said:

there are no partitions and the drive is read only, how would i create a partition and make the drive writable?

well after making the drive writable i cant make a partition until then

[Hamosch]

you can't mount a drive only you need to partition it first, check this tutorial:

 

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/beginners'_guide#Prepare_the_storage_devices

 

You need to partition it with parted, fdisk or gdisk

[Pretzel]

1 minute ago, Hamosch said:

you can't mount a drive only you need to partition it first, check this tutorial:

 

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/beginners'_guide#Prepare_the_storage_devices

 

You need to partition it with parted, fdisk or gdisk

i know i need to create a partition, but doesn't the drive being read only prevent me from doing that?

 

[Hamosch]

nope you don't do anything with mounting before partitioning

 

First you partition then you worry about mounting

 

and where do you get the error messages about it being read only?

[Pretzel]

1 minute ago, Hamosch said:

nope you don't do anything with mounting before partitioning

 

First you partition then you worry about mounting

 

and where do you get the error messages about it being read only?

I think it may be because i had linux mint on the sda drive, and I also think you may be right about me trying to mount before partitioning. i was trying to put mnt into sda1, but it didn't exist and it told me the drive (sda) was read only.

[Hamosch]

huh?

 

does this work or give an error:

# parted /dev/sda

(we will wipe the drive when we partition it, just a warning)

[Hamosch]

4 minutes ago, Pretzel said:

I think it may be because i had linux mint on the sda drive, and I also think you may be right about me trying to mount before partitioning. i was trying to put mnt into sda1, but it didn't exist and it told me the drive (sda) was read only.

how did you call mount?

[Pretzel]

1 minute ago, Hamosch said:

huh?

 

does this work or give an error:

# parted /dev/sda

(we will wipe the drive when we partition it, just a warning)

ok, im fine with wiping the partition. How do i create sda1 after that though?

[Pretzel]

1 minute ago, Hamosch said:

how did you call mount?

Note that I may be describing things wrong because i'm pretty new at arch.

[Hamosch]

we will cover how to partition it.

 

But, first off, do you have bios or uefi?

[Pretzel]

i think its bios. I'm using an asus eee netbook.

[Hamosch]

ok that should be bios, perfect

 

# parted /dev/sda
(parted) print

whats the output of this?

[Pretzel]

2 minutes ago, Hamosch said:

ok that should be bios, perfect

 

# parted /dev/sda
(parted) print

whats the output of this?

error: /dev/sda: unrecognised disk label

Model: ATA WDC WD2500BEVS-6 (scsi)

disk /dev/dsa: 250gb

Sector size (logical/physical): 512b/512b

Partition Table: unknown

Disk flags:

 

[Hamosch]

1 minute ago, Name Taken said:

You can use BTRFS to format the entire disk so partitioning is not needed for simplicity. 

 

mkfs.btrfs /dev/sda
mount /dev/sda /mnt
pacstrap /mnt base grub

 

For manually partitioning, Parted is not the most noob friendly so other options include cfdisk, cgdisk, etc which uses a curses interface

good point, never used btrfs myself, @Pretzel if you want to use ext4 let me know and I'll keep guiding you through parted, but this might be a good option.

[Pretzel]

3 minutes ago, Hamosch said:

good point, never used btrfs myself, @Pretzel if you want to use ext4 let me know and I'll keep guiding you through parted, but this might be a good option.

 

6 minutes ago, Name Taken said:

You can use BTRFS to format the entire raw device so partitioning is not needed for simplicity. 

 

mkfs.btrfs /dev/sda
mount /dev/sda /mnt
pacstrap /mnt base grub

 

For manual partitioning, Parted is not the most noob friendly so other options include cfdisk, cgdisk, etc which uses a curses interface

i'm not particularly good at either, so any is fine for me.

[Hamosch]

if you're going with my suggestion, how much ram do you have, just in case you might need a swap partition...

[Pretzel]

8 minutes ago, Name Taken said:

You can use BTRFS to format the entire raw device so partitioning is not needed for simplicity. 

 

mkfs.btrfs /dev/sda
mount /dev/sda /mnt
pacstrap /mnt base grub

 

For manual partitioning, Parted is not the most noob friendly so other options include cfdisk, cgdisk, etc which uses a curses interface

i just did this, although i'm not entirely sure what i did.

[Pretzel]

1 minute ago, Pretzel said:

i just did this, although i'm not entirely sure what i did.

was pacstrap all the repositories for the linux im used to? with the regular commands like apt-get?

[Hamosch]

great then your done with the partitioning part and it is mounted do /mnt

[Pretzel]

Just now, Pretzel said:

was pacstrap all the repositories for the linux im used to? with the regular commands like apt-get?

because i just downloaded a bunch of stuff

[Hamosch]

Arch uses pacman, not apt

 

pacman -S xxxxx == apt-get install xxxxxx

pacman -Syyu == apt-get update; apt-get upgrade

....

[Hamosch]

3 minutes ago, Pretzel said:

was pacstrap all the repositories for the linux im used to? with the regular commands like apt-get?

 

2 minutes ago, Pretzel said:

because i just downloaded a bunch of stuff

and yes that was the installation process, it just copied a base installation of arch onto your btrfs partition mounted on /mnt