I am wanting to install 2009 onto my hdb drive, re-placing 2008. I have 2008.1 and PC LInux installed, both run well. Windoz is on hda. When attempting to install 2009 an error message tells me my partition table is corrupted at Sector 145243665. The choice offered is to proceed and erase the tables-all date will be lost or not allow the modification. By not allowing the motification, proceeding to the partitioning tool I find only half my partitions are displayed. (With Gparted all my partitioning is displayed.) It appears there is conflict between partitioning devices, giving different answers. Who do I believe? Do I invite trouble in the future by not sorting out those conflicts now. I can do backups, re-partition, re-install but is there a more subtle answer?
Can I resize partitions at hdb8 where over lapping occurs? I think.
My system is as follows:-

[root@localhost ~]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x96349634

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 2315 18595206 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 2316 4865 20482875 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 2316 4865 20482843+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/hdb: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00014084

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 23 184716 83 Linux
/dev/hdb2 24 46 184747+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb3 47 69 184747+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb4 70 24321 194804190 5 Extended
/dev/hdb5 70 1981 15358108+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb6 1982 3893 15358108+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb7 3894 9041 41351278+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb8 9042 9194 1228941 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hdb9 9195 11106 15358108+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb10 11107 13018 15358108+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb11 13019 14931 15366141 83 Linux
/dev/hdb12 14932 16843 15358108+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb13 16844 24321 60067003+ 83 Linux
[root@localhost ~]#

The following seems relevant, but what?

[root@localhost ~]# fdisk -u /dev/hdb8
Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF disklabel
Building a new DOS disklabel with disk identifier 0x0af9aa4e.
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
After that, of course, the previous content won't be recoverable.

Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)

I am sorry this is such a long post, any help would be appreciated.

Hi, there is a program called gpart that will read the drive, and try to guess the correct partitions, and then rebuild your partition table. You'll have to go in and make sure your /etc/fstab is correct too, that it matches your new partition table.

Here is a short article about it.....

http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/...knpxhks_1.html

You might want to use a live CD to do this with, you could screw things up working on a mounted system. I'm not sure though.....

Let us know how it goes.....

David

I couldn't notice anything wrong with your partition table. /dev/sdb8 is your swap partiton.

You might want to run "fdisk -u /dev/hda" so that the start and end points of the partitions are printed out in 512 byte blocks.
For example, the first partition probably starts on block 63 and not on a cylinder boundary. This is normal but rounding to the nearest cylinder boundary can hide this.

Fdisk can be confusing because cylinders are given in as multiples of 512 bytes, but the blocks column are 1024 bytes.

I'm not certain if there is a limit on the number of partitions that an extended partition can contain. I think it is 15 IIRC. There may also be a kernel limit.

You could look at each partition with "du" and see if the size of the filesystems match the size of the partitions. Make sure none of the filesystems claim to be larger than their partition. That would indicate a corrupt filesystem. Maybe this is what Mandriva noticed.

I wouldn't believe the installer - Mandrake, gentoo, Ubuntu have all had problems with installers supposedly correctly handling partitions.
After losing an entire setup with Mandrake 10, I now never allow any partition work as part of the install.An error by you - fdisk should be only run against a device, not a partition like that.