Attempting to install 13.1 to a External HDD, cfdisk stops it.

hunterm · 06-01-2010, 08:21 PM

Hello gents, I've been looking into Slackware for a while now, and I've finally built up the courage to ditch Ubuntu for it. I want to install to a 320gb external HDD, and I've cleared up some space (93gb for Slack') and i've been trying to use cfdisk on it to format it to ext3, but every time I attempt to load it up, it give me this message: "Partition 3 " (that's my NTFS for Windows 7 on my main HDD) "ends on a partial cylinder!". Because of that, I can't continue.
Mind helping me out?

~hunterm

kingm1k3 · 06-01-2010, 08:41 PM

I ran into that issue the other day. I had a bootable Ubuntu disk laying around and created the needed partitions with GParted and it seemed to fix it.

onebuck · 06-02-2010, 08:08 AM

Hi,

Welcome to LQ & Slackware!

Quote:

Originally Posted by hunterm

Hello gents, I've been looking into Slackware for a while now, and I've finally built up the courage to ditch Ubuntu for it. I want to install to a 320gb external HDD, and I've cleared up some space (93gb for Slack') and i've been trying to use cfdisk on it to format it to ext3, but every time I attempt to load it up, it give me this message: "Partition 3 " (that's my NTFS for Windows 7 on my main HDD) "ends on a partial cylinder!". Because of that, I can't continue.
Mind helping me out?

~hunterm

First, this forum has both genders. Several active female LQ members.

Do you have free space available? If not then use the M$ tools to shrink the partition. You could use a LiveCD with 'parted' or the like to perform the actions. You would use 'cfdisk '/dev/your_device' to create partition(s) not format. That action after the partition is created by the use of 'fdisk' or 'cfdisk' would be performed with the front end 'mkfs'.

Quote:

excerpt from 'man mkfs';
NAME

mkfs - build a Linux file system SYNOPSIS

mkfs [ -V ] [ -t fstype ] [ fs-options ] filesys [ blocks ] DESCRIPTION

mkfs is used to build a Linux file system on a device, usually a hard disk partition. filesys is either the device name (e.g. /dev/hda1, /dev/sdb2) or the mount point (e.g. /, /usr, /home) for the file system. blocks is the number of blocks to be used for the file system. The exit code returned by mkfs is 0 on success and 1 on failure.
In actuality, mkfs is simply a front-end for the various file system builders (mkfs.fstype) available under Linux. The file system-specific builder is searched for in a number of directories like perhaps /sbin, /sbin/fs, /sbin/fs.d, /etc/fs, /etc (the precise list is defined at compile time but at least contains /sbin and /sbin/fs), and finally in the directories listed in the PATH environment variable. Please see the file system-specific builder manual pages for further details.
...

'parted' or the like can be used to size, resize, move and format the partition(s). I like to use the M$ tools to organize or manage the M$ system as there is less of chance for things to go wrong with that system. I then use my GNU tools to create or manage the new partition(s) and filesystem(s).

Just a few more useful links;

Slackware® Essentials
Slackware® Basics
Linux Documentation Project
Rute Tutorial & Exposition
Linux Command Guide
Bash Reference Manual
Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide
Linux Newbie Admin Guide
LinuxSelfHelp
Getting Started with Linux

The above links and others can be found at 'Slackware-Links'. More than just Slackware® links!

hunterm · 06-02-2010, 03:38 PM

Also, I forgot to say but, I've also tried using my main hdd as that is the one I wish to use most to install it on. When I do cfdisk on Slackware's disk, it tells me that Partiton 3 (ntfs windows drive) ends on a partial cylinder, and it won't continue. I'd like to skip that and format over my current Ubuntu drive, but I can't because of that, how can I fix that?

(Sorry, about saying hello gents, I just use that as my "intelligent" greetings.

)