You will not be able to write the partition table

ulmo_55 · 04-05-2006, 11:38 AM

Hello, I'm trying to install salckware and here is what i got :

Code:

root@slackware:/# fdisk /dev/hda
You will not be able to write the partition table. device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor sun, sgi or osf disklabel
Building a new DOS disklabel. changes will remain in memory only, untill you decide to write them. after that, of course, the presious content won't be recoverable.

Warning: invalig flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)

Command (m for help):

If i type 'w' for writing,

Code:

Unable to write /dev/hda
root@slackware:/#

Thanks

Randux · 04-05-2006, 12:03 PM

Is this a new disk? What kind is it?

marozsas · 04-05-2006, 01:31 PM

EDIT:
Ops ! Sorry, I didn't see the "Unable to write /dev/hda" at the bottom of your message. Never mind...

Don't worry, just create a new empty partition table with the fdisk command "o".
Write the empty partition table right to the disk, or continue to edit it.

ulmo_55 · 04-12-2006, 01:20 PM

It doesn't work ...

Code:

Command (m for help):o
Building a new DOS disklabel. changes will remain in memory only, untill you decide to write them. after that, of course, the presious content won't be recoverable.
Command (m for help):

marozsas · 04-12-2006, 01:31 PM

Yes... sorry, I didn't see the "Unable to write /dev/hda" at the bottom of your message. I was in hope you could see my EDIT note in my previous post.

Anyway...

Some drives has a jumper to set a read-only mode. There is any chance your drive has this jumper set ? May be you are trying to set a slave disk and by mistake clip the wrong jumper ?

marozsas · 04-13-2006, 07:34 AM

Another idea. What is the result for the following commands ?

Code:

# dd if=/dev/hda of=/tmp/hda.mbr count=1 && dd if=/tmp/hda.mbr of=/dev/hda
# ls -l /tmp/hda.mbr /dev/hda

be carefull to type the commands above, to avoid any typo.

DemoniaC · 02-20-2009, 04:10 AM

Sorry for the necropost but,

Im having the same problem whilst running Backtrack 3 live from the cd.
Im running a Gateway 64bit laptop model #MD2614u.

I tried those two commands and get the following:

1+0 records in
1+0 records out
512 bytes (512b) copied, 8.6234e-05 s, 5.9 MB/s
dd: opening '/dev/hda': Read-only file system

brw-rw---- 1 root cdrom 3, 0 Feb 20 04:46 /dev/hda
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 512 Feb 20 04:56 /tmp/hda.mbr

Im only trying to get some partitions going so I can install backtrack 3 to the hdd. I'm relatively new to linux so it's very likely I may have missed something. Any help that could be given would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.