Partitioning Question

gamedev86 · 03-01-2005, 12:53 PM

Hi, I stopped playing with Linux a while ago after I almost lost everything due to a partitioning error, but I want to try again. Apparently, the problem was that with the newest Linux Kernel, if you try to install it alongside Windows on the same HD, it corrupts your partition table so bad you have to use fdisk alone to fix it. I would like to install a newer distro but I cannot risk that happening again. Has a solution been arrived at? Is there a new kernel (I think the bad one was 2.6) that addresses this issue?

trickykid · 03-01-2005, 01:18 PM

AFAIK, you install Windows first then Linux after creating at least two partitions. Install Windows on the first one, then use the remaining one to create the Linux partitions from. The kernel itself corrupt Windows partitions, installing it wrongly by the end user will though.

comprookie2000 · 03-01-2005, 02:13 PM

There was a problem with fedora a while back that got alot of people upset.

trickykid · 03-01-2005, 02:51 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by comprookie2000
There was a problem with fedora a while back that got alot of people upset.

But that's not the kernel most likely, just Fedora's installer.

gamedev86 · 03-01-2005, 07:17 PM

No, there was something--for me it was actually Suse 9.1. I had tried countless distros, they all worked fine, but this one did a number on my partition table. There was actually a discussion about it in the Suse section, and many attributed it to a specific kernel. It happened to a few people, it was a big deal if I remember.

gamedev86 · 03-01-2005, 08:13 PM

The partitioning tool parted, which YaST uses during the installation, may write an incorrect partition table. The problem occurs if

* the BIOS and Linux "see" different disk geometries AND
* the Windows partition is larger than about 8 GB (more precisely: if the first hard disk partition ends on cylinder 1024 or beyond this point).

When the system is booted, Windows may use the values in the partition table, which causes a failure.

Currently, this problem also occurs on other Linux distributions using kernel 2.6.