From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Dec 24 01:38:43 1995 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id BAA16086 for questions-outgoing; Sun, 24 Dec 1995 01:38:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de (irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de [141.76.1.11]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id BAA16072 Sun, 24 Dec 1995 01:38:34 -0800 (PST) Received: from sax.sax.de by irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de (8.6.12/8.6.12-s1) with ESMTP id KAA09957; Sun, 24 Dec 1995 10:38:31 +0100 Received: by sax.sax.de (8.6.11/8.6.12-s1) with UUCP id KAA08335; Sun, 24 Dec 1995 10:38:31 +0100 Received: (from j@localhost) by uriah.heep.sax.de (8.6.12/8.6.9) id JAA29832; Sun, 24 Dec 1995 09:51:13 +0100 From: J Wunsch Message-Id: <199512240851.JAA29832@uriah.heep.sax.de> Subject: Re: your mail To: gcrutchr@nightflight.com (Gary Crutcher) Date: Sun, 24 Dec 1995 09:51:13 +0100 (MET) Cc: questions@freebsd.org, hackers@freebsd.org Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) In-Reply-To: <199512232023.MAA00354@nightflight.com> from "Gary Crutcher" at Dec 23, 95 12:23:12 pm X-Phone: +49-351-2012 669 X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk As Gary Crutcher wrote: > > I just installed a 2nd SCSI drive. A 2.1GB conner. > Having read many of the newsgroups info about adding a second drive and > reading amilfrom this listserv, I have partitioned the drive, labeled it, > but cannot get the newfs command to work correectly - I get 'not a block > device' error. Hmm, you should better fully quote the message you've got. Newfs doesn't even want to operate on the block device, and it warns you if you are trying this: newfs: /dev/fd0: not a character-special device So: use newfs always on character-special devices. You can distinguish them from the block-device counterparts by the leading `r' (for `raw'). In my above example, the corresponding character device would be ``/dev/rfd0''. At the opposite, _mounting a file system_ (once newfs was successful) _requires_ the block device (and is almost the only operation that should use block devices at all). So i would have to mount: mount /dev/fd0 /mnt as opposed to: uriah # /sbin/mount /dev/rfd0 /mnt /dev/rfd0 on /mnt: Block device required -- cheers, J"org joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)