Hi Everyone!

I am a complete newbie to Linux so please bear with me! I wasn’t sure in how much detail I should go in describing the problem!

I am trying to Install RedHat Linux 7.3 (Valhalla) which I downloaded from LinuxISO.org.

My current PC has 2 IBM HDD 45 GB on RAID 0 setup which I have partitioned as follows using Partition Magic:

(Drives are FAT32 Format)

Drive Partition Name:

• Windows • Apps • Data

I am currently running Windows XP Pro and want to install RedHat Linux on the Data Partition as that is currently empty.

I booted from the first CD and went through the various options until I got to something about partition the Drives. The options I get are:

• Automatically create partition for you.
• Manually Partition with Disk Druid
• Manually Partition with FDisk – Experts Only

I selected the second option first time round and then the third option second time round; however I get the following error:

The Partition table on Device HDE was unreadable. To create new partitions it must be initialised, causing the loss of ALL DATA on this Drive. Would you like to initialise this Drive?

When I clicked on NO/Cancel I got the following error:

An error has occurred – no valid devices were found in which to create new file systems. Please check your hardware for the cause of this problem.

Questions:

1. What I don’t know from all of this is which drive is it saying it can’t read the partition table off?

2. I don’t think there is a problem with the RAID setup as when the setup is initialising the Promise Fast track Driver is detected?

I am not sure how to select the Data Partition as the location where I want to install Linux.

Apologies for the lengthy explanation any help is much appreciated!

Thanks!

Martin Patterson

Hello Martin,

Just a question and a suggestion before I give a shot at your questions.

1. You have 2 45g drives! Why not make one drive dedicated for Linux and the other for WinXP?

2. Are you using any other operating system other then WinXP, if not then why not use ntfs for the file system rather than fat32?

3. This is a public question as well as being directed to you. Would RAID be the way to go when you want both Linux and WinXP install? Wouldn't seperating the 2 45g drives be more adviseable as suggested in my question 1?

These are just questions in my opinion so please don't feel alienated by any means.

With that said, I'll try to answer your questions to my best ability.

1. The drive Disk Druid is referring to is your RAID drive. Because of the functionality of RAID. DD can't seperate your drives as two seperate 45g drives. e.g. first 45g would be /dev/hda0 and the second 45g would be /dev/hdb0, but since RAID is in affect DD believes the drive is something like 90g /dev/hda?. This is just my opinion and I could well be incorrect. This is for the most excellent guru's out there. If I'm incorrect please advise me so! Thanks.

Since RH 7.3 came out I've had duel boot Linux and WinXP on my system at home. I have a WD 30 gig drive for WinXP and a Maxtor 40 gig for my Linux home. My K7T266 MSI MB doesn't support RAID, hence no attempt to RAID the 2 drives.

Recently I've picked up SuSE 8.0 and now it resides where RH 7.3 use to live. So far so good. I've had no problems with both Windows and Linux living together. On 2 seperate drives that is.

Here at work I have RH 7.3 and Win98se on 1 hard drive and the only problem I have is getting LiLo to boot my system. I have to use a boot disk when I want linux up.

Well enough ranting on my side. I hope my suggestions help, even if it's a little! Good Luck!

I would think that Redhat is not recognizing the RAID device. What RAID controller are you using? Is the RAID controller built into the motherboard or an add-on card? Please give specifics of the RAID controller. There are how-to's on getting the Redhat kernel to support RAID devices. I would also suggest getting the moderator to move your question to the HARDWARE forum as they can help you more effectively.

Jon

If you use fdisk, I discovered through trial-and-error that you must make the first 1024 cylinders where Linux /boot partition will reside bootable (a--toggle boot flag in fdisk for the /boot partition). Also, create a /swap partition and use t to toggle the id code to make it a Linux swap partition. After hitting t, hit l for a list of codes. I believe 82 is the code for Linux swap, but I could be wrong...Still confused? Please visit www.tldp.org and read up on using fdisk. It is a complicated program--though powerful program--after all.