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Roger Sherman wrote: | Hi - I'm trying to install Gentoo for the first time, and I've | actually managed to run into a snag before the install process has | actually started. I put the Gentoo cd into the cdrom tray, start the | box up, boot into the installation program, start that up with the | gentoo kernel, get the networking going, and then get to the part | where I'm supposed to partition off my hard drive...and that's where | the problem starts. This particular hard drive has never had anything | on it except for Mandrake Linux (which I've had my fill of). No DOS, | no MS, nothing else. So when I type | | fdisk /dev/hda | | I get the following message: | | "You will not be able to write the partition table. | Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun SGI or | OFS disk label. | Building a new DOS disk label. Changes will remain in memory only, | until you decide to write one. After that, of course, previous content | will be unrecoverable. | | Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by | w." | | | | At this point, all I am trying to do is to build the very basic | partition table suggested in the installation directions, which is a | 32 meg MBR, a 512 meg swap partition, and the rest as a root partition | (definitely not my ultimate setup, but this is just a first run). No | problem with the first partition, but then for the second partition, | it says hit enter for the default start point of 33, and again for the | default end point of 63. For the end point, however, I obviously want | it to be +512M, which is what I tell it to do, and it tells me that is | out of range. Can anyone help me with this hurdle? I'm not very | familiar with hdparm...I tried using a couple of the options that | showed up when I hit m, but couldn't seem to pull it off. |
Rog,
You say that Mandrake was on this system before. How did you have the disk layout with Mandrake? You can always use the same partitions as Mandrake, therefor swap is still swap and the root partition is still a valid linux partition. You just need to know what they are. Here is my disk layout, I have 3 partitions with different roots, 1 /boot, 1 swap, 1 backup, and 1 home. But you should get the idea.
Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes 16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 155061 cylinders Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes
~ Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 * 1 215 108328+ 83 Linux /dev/hda2 216 4312 2064888 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/hda3 4313 30776 13337856 83 Linux /dev/hda4 30777 155061 62639640 5 Extended /dev/hda5 30777 56388 12908416+ 83 Linux /dev/hda6 56389 82000 12908416+ 83 Linux /dev/hda7 82001 107612 12908416+ 83 Linux /dev/hda8 107613 155061 23914264+ 83 Linux
You keep mentioning hdparm, this has nothing to do with laying out a disk. The use of hdparm is to modify how the disk is accessed. Do you want to turn on DMA access that sort of thing, hdparm affects the entire disk not a partition on the disk. An example of hdparm output is as follows:
root# hdparm /dev/hda
/dev/hda: ~ multcount = 16 (on) ~ IO_support = 1 (32-bit) ~ unmaskirq = 1 (on) ~ using_dma = 1 (on) ~ keepsettings = 0 (off) ~ readonly = 0 (off) ~ readahead = 256 (on) ~ geometry = 65535/16/63, sectors = 80026361856, start = 0
If you can show us how your disk layout is, we might be able to see what is going on.
HTH Mike - -- Mike Noble Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Key ID: 0xFFDFC13B Key fingerprint: 8204 1297 B9AD 0CED 2FCE 1FB0 9491 5824 FFDF C13B Keyserver: http://pgpkeys.mit.edu -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.6 (GNU/Linux)
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