Having probs installing mandrake 10.0 Official

Using PM8 - created a 10GB Linux drive ext3 and a 500MB linux swap drive.

Also tried with just empty space.

The setup starts and I choose keyboard and also agree to the license, and the security options. Then I get a message saying:

"I can;t read the partition table of device hde, it's too corrupt". It then tells me that it can go on and erase over bad partitions and in which case, all data will be lost - "error is unkown partition table on disk /dev/hde" Do you agree to lose all the partitions?" so I choose "No" -then there is disk activity for a few minutes and then I get another error message:

"I can't read the partition table of device hdg and some of the above text and "error is bad magic number on disk hdg" do you agree to lose all the partitions?" I select no and there is more disk activity - I am then presented with a final error telling me that there is no room to install.

So I'm pretty stumped - if I clicked yes to any of these messages I suppose I would lose my other partitions?

I have an Asus P4B533-E mb with onboard promise fasttrak raid controller and I'm using RAID0

Steve.

Has anyone got any ideas? I'm absoloutely stumped....

if you click yes it sounds like it will try to fix it which means you will lose everything.

Yup PM8 doesn't deal with the partition tables in a Linux friendly way in spite of the documentation to the contrary.

I've seen exactly what you are referring to.

Your best bet if you are dual booting XP, is to go into XP and use the disk management part of the Computer Manager to delete any non Windows partitions.

Then reboot and start the Mandrake install.

Linux needs to boot from a PRIMARY partition, so do NOT choose the default partitioning. Instead manually create a new PRIMARY partition of between 32 and 64 megs which will be mounted as /boot.

This will house the kernel.

Once the kernel is loaded, Linux can deal with any logical partitions on an EXTENDED partition, so you can lay out the rest how you want.

Though for speed I'd do it like this in your case

Partition 1 - XP (since you already have this) PRIMARY
Partition 2 - /boot - PRIMARY
Partition 3 - Linux SWAP - PRIMARY
Partition 4 - / (Linux root)

Hi - very new to this - so are you saying I should create /boot and / from within windows using pm8? Only reason I say this is because setup falls over before I reach the partitioning section...

I did see this link - do you think it would work?
http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:q...evice%22&hl=en

TIA!

I'd avoid PM8 altogether.

Rather, delete the existing partitions upon which you will be installing Linux so that the corrupt partition table error goes away, then let Linux set things up as I indicated.

I can delete the partition but I can;t get that far in the mandrake setup. I actually think it's a problem with my RAID ata controller (promise) someone told me that 10.1 fixes this.

As far as I can see the first problem you may have is that the installation CD's may not have a kernel on it with the promise controller drivers integrated into the mkinitrd image used on the boot cd.

You may need to flip out of the installation gui (ALT-F1, or F2, etc..) and see if the lsmod command is available which lists loaded modules.

If the promise drivers are not loaded you may have to manually modprobe them as the link you have posted indicated and possibly manually make the device entries.

This must be done before the installer queries the drive configuration.

However if you see the drive attached to the Promise controller at ALL in the partitioning software, then this has already been done for you.

The next problem is that this driver needs to be incorporated into the initrd kernel image which is loaded by the bootloader.

Usually this is the default when the OS is installed so most people do not have problems UNTIL they try to manually update their kernels.

Anyway CAN you get to the partitioning screen in the setup?

It seems you can from your prior posts.

In your shoes I'd also place the /boot partition on your first hard drive /dev/hda (or your primary MASTER drive) instead of /dev/hde.

I hope you deleted the hde partition in PM8.

After doing so go into the Windows XP Disk Management snaping and view the logical disk layouts (partitions).

What does it show for that particular drive?

Hi - no I can not get to the partition screen in mandrake setup - I have tried with a black partition and also with a ext3 linux partition and swap space. Someone told me on another forum that 10.2 fixes this and has support for promise ata raid controllers. As I said I'm pretty new to this so I'm going to download the 10.2 isos and try with that and maybe I'll try what you said above - though I'll probably have to come back for a step by step?

Anyway - I'll try 10.1 and if that doesn't work I'll try and use the hack as in the url posted before...

Thanks for the post - I'm sure it will help.

You'll have to wait a while for 10.2.

I was told that 10.1 takes care of this...

Dunno I haven't tried a MB based Promise controller Linux install.

But I mentioned the 10.2 wait only in that 10.1 is not "officially" out AFAIK.

ahhok I see