I am taking an IT class through Coursera, in this week's lesson we are to learn how to Disk Partition and formatting a file system. I have been using Ubuntu and following along to help myself learn. When I keyed in the command requested 'sudo parted -l" I am getting the error flag that the kernal is not configured for semaphores and I am unable to follow along with the assignment. Could someone please lead me in the right direction on how to correct this issue? I would greatly appreciate any help or guidance that is given.

Is Ubuntu installed on bare metal, or a virtual machine. Which version are you using?

I have a Windows 10 Machine and the Ubuntu was an app I downloaded from the Microsoft store, I have updated it via Linux commands and I am now using version 4.4.0-17134-Microsoft. My understanding of it is that I am running it on my machine along with the Windows OS. (Please keep in mind, I am learning all of this, so I could have that assumption wrong) I have been able to do all of the activities, but not this one.

Hi Faerygirl and welcome to LQ.

If you're somehow running Ubuntu on top of Windows - we would need more clarity on this ... If it's not as a virtual machine guest in something like VMWare or Virtualbox, or maybe a live session, I'm not clear on how you're running Ubuntu.

It may not be surprising that a disk partitioning utility isn't functioning as expected. It expects to see a bare-metal storage setup of some kind, or at the very least some standard virtualized equivalent.

I apologize if this is confusing language. Could you explain a little more about how you're running Ubuntu, to begin with ?

What Faerygirl is describing is the Windows subsystem for Linux - see a description here. It is a compatibility layer developed by Ubuntu, and runs standard Linux binaries on Win10. I tested it when it was first announced, and it worked well for shell commands I needed - awk, perl that sort of thing.
But it is not, and was never intended to be a full Linux implementation.

Faerygirl, I would suggest you install a virtualisation hipervisor and then install a full Linux distro (Ubuntu is fine) as a guest and use that. All the functionality you need will be available, including GUI tools like gparted.
VirtualBox works well, and Microsofts own Hiper-V shoud do as well, although I haven't used it to virtualise a Linux guest.

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if it is a windows 10 drive you are really writing to, let windows format it first and check the partitions windows10 makes so you know what that windows will not get upset

and don't mess up!

... I love this place .. I often learn something new even when trying to help others.

Thanks syg00 - I did not know this.

Faerygirl : I agree with syg00's suggestion for using a standard hypervisor (virtualization software). As mentioned, both VMWare and Virtualbox work well, in my experience, for linux guests.

Cheers and let us know how you make out !