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Originally Posted by thebiggiantmouse
i have been running a dual harddrive system with fedora on dev/hdb and windows on dev/hda. finally i was attempting to partition with cfdisk..
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Cool.
If fedora is still run-able, then hopefully the following will solve your problem!
Firstly... cfdisk assumes that you're going to manipulate /dev/hda if nothing else is defined. In your case, you would be calling
If that is not what you have been calling, then your problem is most likely solved.
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by thebiggiantmouse
hda 1 is the primary and the available linux partition is on hdb
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I get the idea that there are other things on hdb that you don't want to touch. In that case, the following might not be something you want to do, as you will lose everything on the drive. But... if cfdisk just won't work and you're desperate, you can try calling:
It basically ignores the existing partition table when it opens up the drive; working from a "zeroed table" (hence the -z option). So when you write your partition table, it simply overwrites whatever is already there... without "caring" about what exists. I understand some people have had minimal success with this... but I don't see why you would need to do this. If you decide to do this, make sure you make partitions to cover your whole drive so that it overwrites everything. And make sure you have a backup of whatever is there... it will be lost as I don't see any way of finessing this.
There is the
distant possibility that this might not be enough to get you there. Since Fedora has been installed on that disk, then the fedora installer must not have played too much with the drive geometry. If you're stuck you can give it a shot... or google around for a less intrusive process (but this is all I found).
If cfdisk doesn't work:
Go into Fedora or use a LiveCD. Call:
as root and you will get the drive geometry. The important values that you will need are the number of heads and the number of sectors/track. Then as root:
and you'll get (among other things) the amount of heads and sectors per track straight from the disk itself.
Compare those to the output of fdisk.
If you do indeed need to change those values you can do so from the install by calling:
Code:
fdisk -H 16 -S 63 /dev/hdb
My hard drive has 16 heads and 63 sectors per track. Obviously substitute your values from hdparm for mine. I cannot stress enough that you
NEED to have the proper values. Then you should be able to get into cfdisk and do the partitioning.
If cfdisk works but you cannot partition:
When you get into cfdisk you can hit
from the main menu to see the drive geometry and change it if you need to. It's not a visible option, but it's there. Consult the [Help] screen to see what key options are available. Use the values from hdparm.
Apparently drive geometry can be found in the BIOS as well.
I don't see why you would need to do ANY of that because fedora ran fine beforehand. In fact... I personally would look wherever I could for a different solution; but I couldn't find very much on it. I included it just in case you might need it. Plus, fedora is a "newer" distro and might have had workarounds for that type of thing built into its installer that slackware does not. You can also try it if you get to the setup program and it doesn't recognize /dev/hdb.
If all that drive geometry stuff is as unappealing to you as it is to me, then by all means take the time and look for something else... I couldn't find or offer anything more than what I've posted. (And yes, I've done this geometry stuff with another computer for a completely different problem; but it's apparently a solution should a partitioning tool not find a hard disk.) With that being said, you shouldn't have to do any of it if Windows has control over any part of that drive... and it works.
Couple other things:
Cfdisk and fdisk do the same thing especially for what you're doing. I understand that fdisk has some limitations as it is a very basic tool, but I hear about fdisk as superior in a sense that it can do what it does in a variety of environments, which is why it's a standard. It doesn't matter because for your needs it's just as good but harder to use. Anyway... I'm
trying to say that if cfdisk gives you smack then ditch it and try fdisk before you give up.
Plus, if BOTH cfdisk and fdisk don't work, then you know something is up. I would try re-burning the Slack ISOs.
Also... to appease the Slackware gods, you'll want to make sure that before you write the partition table, that the Swap partition is of type 82, and the rest of them are of type 83. This way you'll KNOW that the setup tool
should be recognizing them. You probably know this... but I'm covering my behind.
I hope cfdisk /dev/hdb is all you need. I'm not sure I can help any further than this without living on google for half a day.
Good Luck!
cfdisk
