Ok Im new to Using Linux I hope this is the forum to ask or maybe someone can guide me to the correct place but this is the problem I'm having

I'm trying to install mint 18 Sarah

when I get to the page after you check "something else" and continue

I'm now at a Installer type page and it list many things
/dev/mappper/mint--vg--root 991214 MB unknown Linux device mapper
(linear)(991.2 GB)
/dev/mapper/mint--vg--swap_1 8472 unknown Linux device-mapper
(linear) (8.5GB)
/dev/sda
/dev/sda1 510 MB unknown
/dev/sda5 999691 MB unknown

the new partition table button is grayed out on most things except the "/dev/sda" line but when i click new partition table it gives a error "no modifications can be made to partition #5 of device SCSI6 in use by LVM volume group

or if I click on install now on the bottom right conner button i get another error saying no root file system is defined.

this is a brand new pc with all parts new I built myself. now i think what i did was this. I started to install from USB on boot menu and selected "OEM Install"? however I stopped the installation during mid way because I seen thats not what I really should have done. so now I think this VLM volume group was started to setup (by default, but I could be wrong)when I stopped the install and this is causing me problems.

I cant do anything with gparted I tried, partitions are grayed out, I cant delete them it errors, I cant repartitioned them there grayed out, all my errors point to needing to use some type of LVM manager but all my searches of this LVM just bring me to more confusion of what to do.

Can someone please help me get this installed from my USB stick?

You need to unmount or verify that a partition is not mounted before you can modify it. You need to boot a Live CD/DVD or flash drive and cannot use a booted system. I've never used LVM so don't have any suggestions. You can have access to the entire GParted Manual at the link below. If you can't find what you want, post back.

http://gparted.org/display-doc.php%3Fname%3Dhelp-manual

all I have in a live system. I got a usb drive with mint 18 and was hoping to install it to this new pc, I dont have a optical drive, nor cds or anything so this USB stick has to make this hapopen.


how do I check to see which drives are mounted? I tried umount /dev/sda from the terminal, but it said that drive isnt mounted? thats the one I need? I thought?

You can use any of these from terminal: fdisk, gdisk, cfdisk, sfdisk, parted, to erase the existing partitions.

Yea i already tried Gparted from live USB, its not mounted, and everything is grayed out except delete, and a error comes up saying You are deleting a non-empty Physical volume /dev/sda5 Deleting or overwriting the Physical Volume is irrecoverable and will destroy or damage the Volume Group.

To avoid destroying or damaging the Volume Group, you are advised to cancel and use external LVM commands to free the Physical Volume before attempting this operation.

Do you want to continue to forcibly delete the Physical Volume?

I need this VLM stuff and cant get a straight answer on google. its like billions of pages of stuff unrelated to what I need from VLM

Quit the installer. Click on install linux mint icon and when you get to the installation type select erase disk and install linux mint. This will automatically start over and create new partitions.

I get so aggravated with Google now. to be honest it seems like most of my problems, (which me having problems is super rare). so its like if I have a problem its one of those "Houston, We have a Problem"... and we basically need to get a crack NASA team involved on this, thats how serious it ends up being......

When I use the installer that way, it says I have UEFI compatibility problems and his also pops up If you continue, the changes listed below will be written to the disks. Otherwise, you will be able to make further changes manually.

The partition tables of the following devices are changed:
SCSI6 (0,0,0) (sda)

The following partitions are going to be formatted:
partition #1 of SCSI6 (0,0,0) (sda) as ext4
partition #5 of SCSI6 (0,0,0) (sda) as swap

Before you reinstall since you mentioned a new PC I assumed there was no existing data that needed to be saved?

no data, i just dont want to accidentally mess up the USB stick thats doing this install.. so thats why Im scared of this LVM, I know that is combines hard drives to work together and I dont want any cross over issues or what ever could happen from working with a partition group type I know nothing about

Good, Mint can hand uefi firmware as well as secure boot automatically so nothing to worry about as far as I know. The LVM setup will not try to create partitions on your boot media. What you posted is the default non LVM setup. I would say go ahead.