So I have been trying this for the past half hour with no success. Here is what my step 5 of 6 window looks like:

Mount Point - Size - Partition - Reformat
/ - 29.9 Gb - Partition 6 IDE/ATA 2 (logical) [hdb6] - X
swap - 510 Mb - Partition 7 IDE/ATA 2 (logical) [hdb7] - X


Now, even though I have a root set, I keep getting this error message that tells me that there is no root file system. Anybody know what I'm doing wrong?

This happened with me when trying to use reiserfs for the root partition. Try using ext3.

I have been trying ext3...

edit - Well after trying it over and over again, it for some reason worked eventually. Thanks anyways!

I had a similar situation which I finally understood why I was getting that error message.

I found an install guide that made the comment that when you use the select your own partitions to install to, rather than letting Ubuntu automatically shrink your primary partition or using the largest continuous free space, the installer requires you to specify mount points for all partitions - which includes hda1.

I've got two hard drives, hda is a 40Gb exclusively for Windows and hdb which is 80Gb and is split into multiple partitions for different versions of Linux & free space.

Originally it was one 80Gb partition solely for Ubuntu, but when I repartitoned it into 6 different partions and reinstalled Ubuntu, I had to mount "/" as hdb1, "swap" as hdb5, the other partitions on the 80Gb drive I mounted as "Mandriva" hdb6, "Knoppix" as hdb3 and "Test" as hdb4.

I also had to mount hda1 as "Windows"

Maybe I could have got away with not needing to mount my hdb4,5 & 6 and only mounted hda1.

Looking at the mount points you list in your step 5, you're mounting hdb6 as "/" and hdb7 as "swap" but not mounting anything on your hda which I assume would be hd0 which on my system is where Ubuntu installed Grub.

Similarly, on a laptop installation, I had to mount as follows for the same reason:-

hda1 - "Windows" - 17Gb NTFS partition
hda2 - "Data" - 2Gb Fat32 data partition
hda3 - "/" - 8Gb Ubuntu
hda4 - "swap" - 512Mb Linux swap

If I didn't mount the Windows partition, I couldn't get any further with the installation.

I could be on the wrong track with this reply, but from my own experience it seems a possible explanation.

Hope it helps.

Maybe somebody else could confirm whether what I've suggested is a suitable explanation.