I have had this issue a couple of times now and I am not sure what is happening.

I am creating a custom partition set up on a used drive.
I have deleted all partitions.
Next I try to create a /boot partition but I do not get the option to make it either a primary or extended partition. The option never does show up.

Does anyone know what might be happening and how to correct it?

I went ahead with the installation attempt on one machine but it did not work.

Is it maybe looking at the drive as already flagged for extended?

thanks

I believe that the /boot partition has to be a primary partition, that's why the option doesn't show up.

No /boot/ partition is usually required for an "install to a partition".
And you can also boot from any extended partition.

The possibility to create `extended' is present in Gparted (live-cd)
. http://distrowatch.com/index.php?dis...h=all&year=all
. http://sourceforge.net/projects/gpar...d-live-stable/

You can have four primary partitions. Number four is usually the extended partition.

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ok, added information.

The drive is a 2.5" 500g from a laptop. I can't remember if the other drives were the same.

We put the drive in a lab system and used gparted on it.

The drive showed several partitions on it which was really odd.
We deleted all partitions and formatted it ext2 ( the default setting ) I really did not care since I was going to delete it for a fresh install.
Back to the install, we went to custom partitioning, deleted the partition and tried to set the first partition: /boot.
It still will not give us the choice of primary or extended, like I have always seen on many other installs.
We just let the OS install, creating it's own partition set-up, root, swap, home.
The system boots fine.
We went back in to try an fresh install, just to see, custom partition, delete, create first partition: /boot, no option to choose primary or extention even after the OS did it's own install.

The drive boots and works. I just don't understand why I can't choose.

One of the other installs was going to be a dual boot with windose. We partitioned off drive space with win and then chose to install on that. It did not work. It had no option for primary or extended either. It may have been with the uefi set-up, if that makes any difference.

May it be possible that the partition is using the GPT format instead of the older MBR/DOS format? With GPT, there are no extended partitions, all partitions are primary, since it doesn't have the limitations of the MBR/DOS format.

TobiSGD - I am not sure.

The best test would be to go back into gparted and set it up as fat32 or such then try an install again.

The guy that wanted the drive set-up has taken the it happy with it booting into Suse. I will have to wait for another drive to test.

Still, when you do custom partitioning, the first step for a fresh install is to delete all partitions on the drive. I assumed it would ignore all previous data from the drive including MBR. It bothers me that the option does not appear on either way.
In OpenSuse, when you create a custom partition, the very first selection is primary or extended, even before you select partition size or mount point. Afterward, once you have select extended, you do not get the option anymore.

Thanks for all the input!

Formatting a partition in FAT32 or deleting partitions has no influence on the type of partitioning used, nor should the type of partitioning used have influence on the actual functionality of the OS. If you want to start from scratch with a clean partition table the easiest way is to tell GParted to create a new partition table.

Thanks TobiSGD,

I did delete all partitions and created a new. Did not think to leave it un-formatted. You can fill a thimble, maybe, with what I know.
I agree that it should make no difference, but I can't figure out what it is.
Just talked to the guy with the drive this morning and the it works fine for him.
I just don't like unexplained oddities.

I'll try to post later if something comes from it. I have had more than one instance, probably not the last.

ttfn

The old computers used BIOS as firmware and in pc's the default and supported partition was MSDOS partition. In MSDOS partition table only there is option of primary and extended partitions.

Newer systems chose UEFI and it only supports GPT(EFI) parttitons. And this partition has nothing called extended partition. So there would be no option given for it.

Check your system manual whether it runs the newer UEFI or may be hybrid of UEFI and BIOS.

If you want to use extended partitions then set BIOS or compatibility mode as default.

Thanks for the reply veerain

The work was being done using older systems.
I have not really done much work with the "newer" motherboards so I don't know anything about the UEFI set-up.
These systems that are donated, "as is", no manuals and often, for some reason, we find little
info about them through google sensei.
Guess I will need to order a newer MB and play with it.
Could be interesting how I will eventually have to change installations.

Or you can post output of That way we know if it's gpt or msdos partition table.