error running "cfdisk" vs. "fdisk"
 

I can run fdisk without any troubles
However, I get a fatal error when I try "cfdisk".
An alternate way of looking at the fdisk report might be:
(I edited the report by hand)
The various colors highlight groups of cylinders that were created together, out of order with their respective partitions numbers.
I don't see the problem that cfdisk complains about.

Help, please,
~~~ 0;-Dan

sda3 and sda6 have start cylinders which are the same, in fact, sda6 is within sda3 which, er... you could say is the overlap seen by cfdisk. Maybe fdisk doesn't care as much? :D

However... I notice that sda9 is tagged as Linux/Solaris. A clue perhaps? Has this disk been partitioned on a Sun box? For reasons best known to Sun, disks partitioned and formatted on their systems have this strange third partition which is effectively "the whole disk" OK, so you've got a Compaq diagnostic partition hidden on the front which infers it belongs in a Compaq box and is not part of "The whole disk"...

Just a thought :twocents:

Play Bonny! :hattip:

Of course they overlap, because they have to! sda3 is an extended partition which contains of course other logical partitions, in this case all partitions from sda5 to sda11. This is not an error.
First, it is sda11 that is tagged as Linux swap/Solaris. Second, I think this is normal.

In fact, I don't see any error in this partition table.
Have you tried other partitioning tools like GParted?

Rats! I read SaintDanBert's hand sorted partition list:

which may have caused the confusion, I should have noted the partition ID; 83 = Linux, bf = Solaris. :doh:

So, is the extended partition normal on X86 systems? I've just checked my system and I don't have one. My Sun Ultra 2 DOES with the disk formatted under Solaris. Could it be that cfdisk doesn't like extended partitions?

Extract from "man cfdisk"
Nope. I couldn't find any references to extended partitions. Any Ideas?

Play Bonny! :hattip:

This probably won't be all the helpful, but I used to get a similar error when I tried to use Cfdisk in a gentoo install as well. I ended up being forced to use fdisk instead. If the option is available, using a gparted live CD to cut up your drives instead is much easier.

cheers :)

Yes, extended partitions are normal on PC's. It's the only way to get more than 4 partitions on a disk.
There can only be 4 primary partitions on a disk (sdx1-4). One of these primary partitions can be flagged as extended partition.
There can be only 1 partition flagged as extended. The extended partition then can be divided in logical partitions (sdx5-sdx..).
Logical partitions will always start at sdx5 no matter how many primary partitions there are.

For the problems with cfdisk. I suspect that the strange order of logical partitions confuses cfdisk enough, so it will quit rather then hose the disk.
The only other possible problem I see is with the extended partition flag
5 Extended
instead of the more modern use of
f W95 Ext'd (LBA)

You could try parted to see if that also gives errors.

_________________________
Gerrard

SDA6 is a "logical partition". they must exist inside an "extended partition". SDA3 provides that extended partition. Does this mean that cfdisk cannot display drives with "extended" partitions or is it expecting some other partition type that what is going on here?

That is how "swap space" gets reported. I don't know why.

Actually, the partition is loaded by Lenovo rather than Compaq. Yes it is their diags and recovery utils. It must be the second partition on the first drive or else it will not boot. It must be fat32 and is very VERY win-doze oriented.

~~~ 0;-Dan

CAUTION Olde dog trying new tricks!!

I completely forgot (continuously forget) about parted and gparted in this brave wonderful world of linux.

Notice how the partitions are ordered? I suspect it is that situation that confuses cfdisk.

Thanks to all,
~~~ 0;-Dan