Partitioning Not Working During Qiana Install
 

Hi All,

I have attempted to install Version 17 of Mint (Mate) to replace my Version 16. I wanted to do this setting up partitions for Swap and
Home but could not find any option in the installation routine to implement this.

My understanding is that installation is the time to partition but
I don't know how.

The live file does install to give a set-up that appears to work pretty much like my older Version 16 which I originally installed without partitions. Since this is a learning process, I would like to get further this time.

I haven't loaded any of my backup files yet because I imagine I'll have to redo the installation.

Where can I find some How-To instructions? What I had obviously were not complete enough to compensate for my ignorance.

You need to select the "Something Else" option in Installation Type. You should get a window which will show your drives/partitions and you can either select a current partition Change it or select free/unallocated space and add a partition. Tabs below the window. If you have partitions currently on the disk and they don't show up you have bigger problems than partitioning.

Hi yancek,

"Something else" is where I was looking. When I get some time I'll have to try that again.

I did see a read out of what I had had on Version 16 but nothing seemed to be a way to input any changes. I looked into it with frisk and whatever the install procedure put in did include a swap partition, but that is supposed to be the default.

After selecting 'Something Else' and clicking 'Continue', the next page 'Installation Type' should show a main window which also should liste your hard drives, the partitions on those drives as well as their size and filesystem type. The output in this window is similar to what you see from fdisk. You need to highlight a partition in the main window and then click the Change tab below it. If you don't have a partition available but do have unallocated or free space, you can highlight it and Click the Add tab. If you don't see any of this, then the Mint installer isn't seeing your partitions for some reason. Might not be a problem if you have not data partitions or other operating systems you still want.

Linux Voice recently posted a video you might find useful. It's the second one on this page:

http://www.linuxvoice.com/getting-started-with-linux/

Hi frankbell,

You suggested I might find the second video in your link, for Mint 16 useful.

That's interesting but I don't see much that looks like what I'm getting. I'm sure I'll be coming back to it, though.

Up through the language screen installation seems to be the same for 17 as for 16, but when I continue to the next screen that has the "For best results …" bit, A popup panel asked me whether I want to unmount a partition called /dev/sdc. Note that I only have one disk in the netbook (that I expected to be called /dev/sda in a Linux context). Using the terminal command df -h, I see a /dev/sdc1 on the Live CD USB; that wouldn't seem to be a good thing to unmount.

So I guess my first question is what's this /dev/sdc and why is the install program proposing that I unmount it?

Regards,

Gene Falck

My guess is that the partitioner doesn't realize that /dev/sdc is where it's running from. All it's seeing is an external disk and it wants to reduce the chance user might inadvertently point to the wrong target partition for the install. Again, that's just a shot in the dark.

You have a compelling reason to ignore the partitioner's suggestion and proceed to install to a partition on /dev/sda.

Hi frankbell,

Thanks--that's about what I thought might be afoot. I just didn't want to believe any of our Linux installation programs would try to shoot itself in the foot. LOL.

Regards,

Gene Falck

Actually, the last several version of Mint I have installed have this message about whether the user wants to unmount partitions on different devices and it didn't seem to make much difference which option was selected. As I recall, the message referred to creating, deleting or resizing partitions. If you already had a partition available it wasn't a problem.

Hi frankbell and all,

I have been having some problems getting this MacBook Pro to handle videos. Specifically I have some hearing loss and I need some success with getting the audio up where I can follow. It turns out, where Windows always worked well, apple needs to have the audio turned up specifically for an external amplifier and speakers as a separate deal (even after turning the computer speaker audio up). The URL you suggested is probably pretty good for Version 17 even though it's for 16; however it didn't pinpoint solutions to my problems.

By trying to follow various instructions for partitioning, I have worked past some things I missed.

So, where I am right now. I have run through the installation process without worrying about the partitions and it appears to be about the same as I had with Version 16. Continuing on my quest, I hope my use of markup works as I try to explain my latest "now what" question.

I tried cfdisk on that "plain vanilla" installation and got:

Now when I try to install and work out the partitions during the install process, the "Installation type" screen clearly shows:

AFAIK, the 160GB drive on my netbook is properly described as /dev/sda, not /dev/sdb.

Why does it show up in the installation as sdb? What does that mean for my next step?

Regards

Most likely because you are booting from a flash drive to install and the flash sees itself as sda. You should be able to easily verify this with either fdisk or gparted (which is on the Mint Live CD) based on the size of sda compared to the size of sdb. I observed this behavior when I installed Mint 17.

Hi all,

I now have Mint 17 up and running with my partitioning experiment. I had missed some of the needed steps (my main problem) and also had doubts about the sda vs. sdb as shown by the installer.

The sdb is indeed the right place to work on the desired partitioning on the installer screen even though it's sda on my machine.

As an overall impression, 17 seems slower than 16. Only time will tell whether my hardware is dying or 17 is just more demanding of the limited resources of an old machine.

Any additional thoughts before I mark this as solved?

Thanks everyone,

Gene Falck