Installer will not install to assigned partition
 

Hello Everyone,

I am just re-learning Linux having been away for a couple of years. When I was heavily involved in learning, I seemed to learn the most by using Slackware, Arch, and Debian. I cannot get Slack 12 to install (tried a number of fixes, none worked.) So, Debian was my next choice. I have a second hard drive (IDE, the other is SATA) with Ubuntu on the first partition and I wanted to install Debian on the second. The partitioner in the install process recognized the partitions, but called them hdc1 and hdc2 (Ubuntu had apparently automatically created a 912mb swap partition because I didn't create it.)

I instructed the installer to install to hdc2, but it refused to do so and kept trying to format and install to the swap partition. After going back and forth several time, I finally got it agree to install to hdc2, but it would not do it unless the swap partition was also included in the format process. The rest of the in stall seemed to go OK (although it really gave me a hard time about not wanting a bootloader installed to the MBR since I already had GRUB.) I finished the install and edited the GRUB file to boot and found that not only could GRUB not find the partition, but the install had wiped out the Ubuntu installation as well. This was not a castasrophe as I am just testing with this machine anyway. I just reinstalled Ubuntu after recreating the partitions with Gparted.

Before I try it again, is there an easier method of getting through the partition assignment portion of the installation? These partitions were pre-formatted in ext3. The Ubuntu installed seamlessly installed to the correct partitioin, but Debian would not.

I hope I have provided enough information to try to offer an answer.

Any thoughts very much appreciated.

Bob

I had a similar problem with one of my Debian installs where it refused to do the partitioning the way I wanted. The way I got around it was to use fdisk to delete the partition where I wanted Debian installed. Then in the Debian install I told the installer to create a partition for / out of the free space on the drive. I also told it to use the existing swap partition and to format the swap partition. The Debian installer executed this combination of instructions correctly.

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Steve Stites

Thanks, Jailbait. Completely forgot about fdisk, but to tell the truth I never though about deleting the partition being a solution since the partition was formatted, but empty. I will try your method. Makes sense.

Thanks again.

Bob

Actually I don't think that it makes sense. I think that there was something wrong with the installer. By trial and error I found a route through the logic of the installer that worked. If your version of the Debian installer has the same problem then my workaround might also work for you.

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Steve Stites

Sorry, what I meant by "makes sense" is that your solution makes sense. I agree that there is something wrong with the installer. I have not come across this problem in any other distro. The version I was trying to install is Etch 4.0. Is there a network install that I can do from the internet?

Regards

Bob

Yes, you download the Debian network.iso file debian-40r3-i386-netinst.iso from:

http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/...t/i386/iso-cd/

I had the partitioning problem with the r1 iso. Maybe the problem is fixed in r3.

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Steve Stites