>Hello, > Please forgive me for this newbie question. I >am new to linux and >Debian. > I have a question regarding installation. I have a >13 gig hard drive >which I partitioned this past weekend so that I could >dual boot Debian >Linux alongside Windows 98. Using the fips program, I >split my hard >drive >into two 6.5 Gig drives. Everything seemed to go >fine. > Last night I began my installation of Debian >(slink). Very soon into >the >process, it told me that there was no linux swap >partitions preset on >my >system and it told me to partition my hard disk to add >"linux native" >and >"linux swap" partitions to my disk. > So, knowing that I needed to create a linux >swap, I did as it told me >and >sought to partition the /dev/hda drive. But then it >gave me an error >message saying "Fatal Error: Bad primary partition." >Then it told me >"cfdisk has failed while trying to repartition your >disk. That may >mean >your disk's partition table is corrupt, or your disk >is 'factory >clean.' I >may wipe out your disk's current partition table and >run cfdisk again. >Warning: You will lost any data currently on that >disk. Are you sure >you >want me to do this?" > I would like to make sure I understand what >has happened here. I >think >this all means that when I used Fips to partition my >hard drive, that >something went wrong. Furthermore, the only solution >is for the Debian >Installation program to clear the entire hard drive >and start again, >essentially wiping out Windows and everything running >off of Windows. >Is >this correct? Is there anyway to fix this problem >without erasing >everything? Or am I wrong in what I think is >happening here?
THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOUR PARTITION TABLE!!!! DO NOT WIPE OUT THE DISK. IF YOU DO YOU WILL EITHER STILL GET THE SAME ERROR, OR END UP WITH ONLY 8.4GB OF USABLE DISK SPACE!!!! What you got is a bogus error message from cfdisk. Try running fdisk by hitting <alt><f3> to get another vconsole and you will see that when you use the p command to print out the partition table that the starting and/or ending 'addresses' of the partitions are duplicated. What this means is that fdisk (and cfdisk) see different 'logical' and 'physical' addresses (chy,head,sect) for these partitions. Fdisk treats this as a warning, cfdisk treats it as a fatal error. The problem is that the 2.0.x kernels (which is what is on the boot floppy images) does NOT report the correct geometry for disks larger than 8.4gb. I ran into this problem also (I have a 17.2 gb drive in my machine). You need to know what the ending cyl is and give this to cfdisk on the command line, or to fdisk as an expert mode command. Then these programs will work correctly. IF fdisk or cfdisk are run under a 2.2.x kernel it will work 'out of the box' correctly. My solution was to do the partition operation using RedHat 6.0 and THEN abort the RedHat install, and THEN proceed to install debian (only NOT partitioning the hard disk since it already WAS partitioned.) Since I now know the correct c,h,s parameters for my disk (having discovered them under redhat) I can re-partition under debian by going off to another vconsole and then issuing the cfdisk command: cfdisk -C xxxx to set the correct cylinder size. Thanks very much! Bryan Walton ===== Amateur Radio, when all else fails! http://www.qsl.net/wa2mze Debian Gnu Linux, Live Free or ..... __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com
