Partition creation problem while installing SL6
 

Dear Members,

I am installing SL 6 on system having win7, when I boot from DVD and try making partitions I select free space and then standard partition and try making “/”, “/boot” and “swap”. The problem I am facing is that I am able to make only one of the three partitions and when I try making second it gives me error “ could not allocate requested partition, not enough space on disk” despite I have free space.

Please assist.

You will need to create the partitions as logicals, and assign mount points for them appropriately.
Can't say how to do it using the installer - I always pre-allocate the partitions, and merely do the mount points during install. Works fine with Centos 6, so I expect Scientific to be likewise.

hi syg00;
how I am going do that using installer? can't I make all these (/,/boot and swap) as partition? I am selecting free disk space and press create and assign space and use ext4 for / and /boot, I dont understand what i am doing wrong here :S

MS-DOS imposed a limitation of 4 primary partition per disk - this affects Windows and Linux as well. I am suspecting you already have (at least) 2 partitions. If you run the SL6 CD/DVD as a liveCD (rather than installing), from a terminal run this as root and post the complete output

thats it.

I wonder how I forgot this basic rule of having maximum 4 partitions per disk. same applies to linux, thats something new for me.

many thanks syg00, here I got 2 queries please,

1: I got boot partition of 100 Mb thats already on disk as sda1 and this system wasnt installed with linux before so i wonder why is this boot partition made with win7

2: In this scenario where I am limited to make only one partition as there are 3 partitions already made on disk, how will I cope with it and make 3 partitions for linux. I am aware of extended structure but in windows environment, dont know how it is going to work here :S

[QUOTE1: I got boot partition of 100 Mb thats already on disk as sda1 and this system wasnt installed with linux before so i wonder why is this boot partition made with win7][/QUOTE]

Windows 7 OEM installs generally have a separate boot partition of about 100MB, then a recovery partition and the rest of the disk the system so it this was a pre-installed system that is the probably scenario.

Linux tries to be a good citizen in a M$oft dominated world - it's a pity M$oft doesn't do likewise.Works exactly the same. Make sure you have a single block of free (unallocated) disk space - resize the current partitions if necessary. Create an extended partition to use all the unallocated space - then inside the extended create logical partitions for Linux.
As I said I find it best to pre-allocate them prior to install.

Different installers present this differently. I don't know if syg00 was answering regarding SL 6 or generically.

Correct (regardless of how this particular installer work). Someone needs to turn that all into one extended partition. Whether that is you vs. some automatic behind the scenes operation depends on the installer.

Maybe your installer needs you to explicitly request creation of an extended partition. But other installers create it automatically when you request creation of logical partitions.

Somewhere in the partition creation dialog there may be a check box or similar detail to force the partition to be primary, in which case you need to turn that off. Or there may be a similar detail to force it to be logical, in which case you need to turn that on.

thanks all for your inputs.

Tough i got the concept but unfortunately I am still standing where I was. Let me repeat my scnario;

* I got 3 partitions already used by my windows 7
* I need to create 3 further partitions for linux but due to limitation I can create only one so I need to introduce extended concept here to take me out of this problem

BUT

My installer provides me these options while I try creating partitions.

1: standard
2: RAID
3: LVM physical volume
*LVM volume group is disabled

How do I introduce and use extended here.

@Syg00, For the solution you recommended, I guess I am newbie in linux to do it, even though I googled for it :S

Some reference link to do this may also work here if there are so many steps involved.

Thanks

Seeing as your profile indicates Centos, you can boot off the install DVD and select Rescue mode, which will mount your main HDD just as a non-runnng data disk.
You can then use eg fdisk to add a 4th partition of type Extended eg http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/html_single/Partition/.
You can then start creating primary partitions in/after the Extended one; see that article.
Obviously you have to start by checking you actually have enough TOTAL disk space to add all the partitions you want.

Another clue:

1. Run live CD, use gparted, partition whatever remaining space into a single primary partition. Just one primary for the whole remaining space;

2. Then divide this new partition into:
---100Mb == /boot == LOGICAL Partition (maybe sda5)
---2500Mb== /swap == LOGICAL Partition (maybe sda6)
---whatever remains== / ==LOGICAL Partition (maybe sda7)

3. Install /boot, /swap & / accordingly.

Since Gnu/Linux boots from either Primary or Logical partition there is nothing to worry where to place the /boot {unlike windows to always beg and beg for the prime sda1,2,3}.

Hope that helps.

Good luck.

I can't be sure without seeing/trying it. But I think there is some choice for logical vs. primary after you select standard.

Try selecting standard and look carefully at what choices you have.

If you can somehow select logical, I think the installer will build the extended partition around that.

Alternately, there may be an option earlier in the install sequence to use pre existing partitions and just select mount points and file system types for those. If that is the case, then the easiest answer may be to boot into liveCD mode of some Linux distribution (not necessarily the one you want to install) and use its GUI partitioning tool to create the extended partition and logical partitions you want. Then reboot back to the installer and select use of existing partitions (careful not to use sda1 through 3).

That is the method I always preferred when installing Centos. The partitioning portion of the Centos installer always confused me and it was a struggle to get it to create the partitions exactly as I wanted. Probably I could have figured all that out, but it was far simpler to boot my Mepis CD and use its partitioning tool to create exactly what I wanted, then tell the Centos installer which existing partitions to use for what.