Problem creating partitions...
 

Hello,

I have just booted up "puppy" onto an empty
Dell Latitude d610 laptop. It is version 4.1.2.

Im attempting to create partitions, but have become stuck.
The program is "GParted"

Right now, all that exists is "file system" ext 3
partition: dev/sdal. size is 37.26 GiB. It is unmounted.

Ive tried using the "resize/move" button, and cant seem to decrease the amount of space for this partition, in order to create a new one. I noticed, when I click on dev/sdal, the min size and max size are both listed as 38154 MiB, which seems problematic to me (in my un-educated opinion)

there is a warning symbol after "dev/sdal" that reads as follows, when clicked:

e2label: no such device or address while trying to open /dev/sda1
couldnt find valid folesystem superblock

dumpe2fs 1.41.2 (12-jul-2007)

unable to read the contents of this filesystem!


1. Is it nec. to create partitions, if I am not running windows, and do not anticipate running another distro?

2. If it is reccd to create partitions (which it seems to be) what am I doing wrong?

((entirely new and learning))
thank you for your time! jenn



:newbie:

The very minimum that you need is one partition. This is the same for other operating systems, too.

I'm not sure what going on; is 37.72 Gigabyte the size of your disk? (I suspect it isn't as that doesn't sound like a standard size, although that may be a nominal 40G with a bit lost; so please say the size of the disk.) If there are already partitions on the disk, you can only use space up to the area in which there are existing partitions, unless you delete the existing partitions.

You could also use an existing partition, if you want. You wouldn't then be able to change the size, but changing the partition to one of linux partition types (eg, the ext3 that you have chosen) is the right thing to do.

That said, puppy is small and this ought to be easily enough space to install it, if that's what you want to do.

salasi,

Thanks for replying.

The laptop is supposed to have a 40GB HD size, you are correct. I purchased this laptop from a company that was replacing all their computers, and its been totally sanitised/erased of all files.

The 37.26 size I mentioned is listed in the GParted program, as the partition size of "/dev/sda1"

All of the instructions I read for creating partitions made the assumption that Windows was already set up on the main partition. So I will try looking for info on how to create partitions on an empty computer.

When I was attempting to install puppy onto the hardrive, there WAS an option for full setup, meaning no partitions. But this was NOT reccd by the prompts.

Will do some more research..like I said, Im entirely new.
Thanks!
jenn

solved!~
 

Hi salasi,
Wanted to let you know, I figured out what to do.
Probably, it would have been obvious to anyone else, but:
I had to delete the existing partition to create new ones.
Somehow,
the idea of deleting something, esp the only partition, made me super nervous. But I did it, nothing exploded, and Ive created partitions.

Thanks for your assistance and patience,
jenn

I haven't been through the puppy installer, but its more likely that this option was 'I'll sort out the partitions, so that you never have to know or care about it'.

To an extent, whether this is a good option or not depends on whether the installer has guessed correctly about what you want to do in terms of keeping existing partitions for existing operating systems, etc, etc. So it is often not the best option, if you have a complex usage scenario, but you would probably have got away with it as you have one of the simpler usage scenarios in that you are not trying to do anything with existing data on the disk.

Partitioning is one of those things that feels scary the first time or the first few times, but you are in a good situation in that you are working with a machine on which you don't have any valuable data that you could lose.

Good luck!

I am not good in telesupport but I know it is good for Puppy like for all other Linux if you have a Swap-partition.
Best is either one Primary Partition ext3 for Puppy
and another primary Partition with linux-swap
Set Boot-flag to hda1

or if you have multiple boot:
One primary Partition for e.g. Windows (ntsf)
One extended Partition with Datapartition (ntsf or fat),
Linux-Partition (ext3),..
One Primary Partition again for Linux-swap-Partition
Set boot-flag again

For Puppy the ext3 should be at least 0,5GB and the Swap 1,00GB
You have to try out gparted
Maybe it is that you didn't press "aplay" after changings
It can just be a little thing, I remember once I had the same problem but I can't remember what it was.

Do you run gparted from the liveCD or from the harddisk which you want to change?

comments
 

salasi,
yes, a blank machine makes "risks" much easier to take! thanks again. i've played around a bit more, learning about the dif partitions, why they are dif and so on.

computerophil:
i appreciate your suggestions here. will give me a nice "assignment" for moving forward. im running puppy off the live disk right now, and was attempting to install it to run off the HD when i encountered the partition problem. i've read that running off the live disk is actually faster, and a fine thing to do....but i wanted to see what running off the HD would be like.

thanks so much!
jenn

I have Puppy 4.1.2 on a 40G hd as well. I just partitioned off 2X the ram size for a swap,...and let Puppy just install on the rest. It's easy that way for me,....since I do a LOT of "tinkering" and sometimes either crash stuff,..or decide I want to change things. No problem,...as I usually can just pop in the Live CD,...and do an re-install,...and then check the "upgrade" option. I've used Puppy since version 3.01,..and find it's just a very useful and versitile little distro.