Ubuntu Ultimate Edition 1.4-- Misreads Partition Table

Haloony · 07-12-2007, 08:34 PM

Hi All,
I recently tried out Ubuntu Ultimate Edition 1.4 with Live Cd. I loved it, and it helped me remember what drew me to Ubuntu. Now the problem is installing it to my drive. I already have existing partitions, and I want to install ubuntu without disrupting anything. The problem is that the installation software reads my drive as empty; all unallocated. The weird thing is that I am able to mount my existing partitions without trouble; within this live distro.

pixellany · 07-13-2007, 01:20 PM

Looking at their website, I'm not sure that I would take them seriously (several bad links, including "about" and "contact"--nothing obvious to show the date of last update, etc.)

Suggest you get the regular Ubuntu and see if that works: http://www.ubuntu.com/

Haloony · 07-16-2007, 04:49 PM

Hi Again,
After seeing that Ubuntu Ultimate misreads my partition table. I took Pixellany's advice and went elsewhere. The truth is that Feisty was giving me problems so I looked into other options. Mepis became one alternative, but I didn't like it. Ubuntu Ultimate was the next alternative, but that is where I reached my Dilemma. After Ubuntu Ultimate I tried Debian Etch and retried Feisty; still my entire disk is seen as empty. The first time I tried Feisty it was slow and malfunctioning, but it did not misread my drive. At the moment, my true drive structure is an Xp Partition, a Mepis Partition, a /home partition, a swap, and a toshiba recovery partition. I am not understanding why this is happening. Here is my Fdisk:

Code:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l  /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        6374    51199092    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2            9154        9729     4626720    b  W95 FAT32
/dev/sda3            7650        9153    12080880   83  Linux
/dev/sda4               1        7649    61440561    5  Extended
/dev/sda5            6375        6501     1020096   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6            6502        7649     9221278+  83  Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Haloony · 07-18-2007, 07:37 AM

Ok,
I decided to test out a distro that was not based on Debian; so I decided to give CentOs a swing. I downloaded and burned version 5.0 Live Cd. Everything went well, and my partitions were recognized. I was able to access my partitions, but access was never the issue. In the previous attempts I was able to access my partitions also. The problem only came up when attempting to install to drive or while using a partition editor. In the case of CentOs, I tried to run Qtparted, but got this error:

Code:

Critical error during ped_disk_new!

and after the error Qtparted sees my drive, recognizes that there are partitions within, but states the my device /dev/sda is busy. I am still confused. Please help.

syg00 · 07-18-2007, 07:46 AM

Probably crap installer(s).
Most of the (especially GUI-based) installers seem to demand a primary partition for the root. Ubuntu forces swap to a logical.
Go figure.

Try the alternate CD for Ubuntu, and do the partitioning as you want.

Haloony · 07-22-2007, 01:29 AM

Hi Again,
I tried the Ubuntu alternate cd, but I got the same result. The installer is not seeing the partitions. I do not think it is a problem with the installers. I have gone through the installation process with Feisty with the same partition structure, and the installer did see the correct partition table.

Next I decided to test out the drive with a Gparted live cd, and the drive came up as a large block of unallocated space. By the way, the partitions are definitely there; I have been booting into them succesfully since this problem emerged.

I ran fdisk -l from the gparted cd, and it was normal. However, fdisk /dev/sda has a strange output(I ran this in gparted and in Mepis):

Code:

root@1[Hal]# fdisk /dev/sda

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 9729.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
   (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help):

--Still Confused; any help would be great.

Haloony · 07-23-2007, 07:56 PM

Hey Guys,
After reading some of your replies, and doing some of my own observations, I was able to research the problem a little. A came across a similar problem posted on this website: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=349241.
This post is not so recent, but most advisees point out extended partitions as the issue. I too have an extended partition, but it is not the issue. Gparted and Feisty's installer were both able to read my drive perfectly with the extended partition. I don't know what else to try.
-Hal

syg00 · 07-27-2007, 05:54 PM

Just got back to this. I'd be *real* careful playing with that disk.
The mapping of the extended cannot be correct. If this box started out as an XP machine, sda1 is a primary - it cannot (sensibly) be remapped by the extended.
I would accept the extended occupying from 3675 to 7649. Unusual, but not illegal.
It's possible some distros installer (anybody out of all you've tried) couldn't handle the extended partition originally being mapped "between" primaries.
Could be fixed, but would be tricky.

But even if you were to fix that, you don't have any free space for a new install.