do you wish to start with a zero table message

lost_packet · n00b Joined: 29 Dec 2002 Posts: 19

What does "do you wish to start with a zero table" mean? Is it going to format the mbr?

If it helps, I have one drive with XP (ntfs) on the primary partition, and 3 linux ext2 partitions after it.

Thanks for any help

delta407 · Posted: Sun Dec 29, 2002 2:56 am Post subject:

What gives you that message? There's not enough information in your post to offer help.
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lost_packet · n00b Joined: 29 Dec 2002 Posts: 19

sorry
I boot off the cd and setup eth0, root pwd (new install)
I then type cfdisk and get a msg that I don't have permission to write to the disk.
After that I get the zero table message

delta407 · Posted: Sun Dec 29, 2002 3:17 am Post subject:

lost_packet · n00b Joined: 29 Dec 2002 Posts: 19

delta407 · Posted: Sun Dec 29, 2002 4:58 am Post subject:

Well, if you're root, you ought to be able to access anything you darn well please. What drive are you trying to partition? What command are you using to do this?
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lost_packet · n00b Joined: 29 Dec 2002 Posts: 19

I only have one 40Gb hdd. The first partition (30Gb) is NTSF and contains XP. After that I have a 100Mb primary ext2 partition, a 4.85Gb primary ext2, and a 4.5Gb primary ext2 partition. Obviously I need to keep the first in tact due to M$ XP, but I can do what ever with the rest. I have tried changing the last three partitions from ext2 to unformatted, logical drives, and even fat to see if it makes a difference, but i still get the same error.

The command I'm using is cfdisk. I have tried fdisk and get a similar error. I also tried cfdisk /dev/hda but it produces the same error.

I've dual booted win2k and various redhat and/or mandrake distros and never ran into this before.

markmm1975 · n00b Joined: 29 Dec 2002 Posts: 4

When using cfdisk you must pass an argument to let the program know which disk you wish to work with i.e.
cfdisk /dev/hda

or

cfdisk /dev/hdc
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scocou · Posted: Sun Dec 29, 2002 6:19 pm Post subject:

I would suggest trying a boot/install cd from another distro. I used to run into problems similar to yours and have found that Slackware's 8.0 install cd ALWAYS works when I use cfdisk, even when I just tried and got an error with another. Yeah, I know that it's not an elegant or guru-ish thing to do, but it always worked when others failed, so you should give it a try if your interested in solving the problem, although admittedly you won't learn what's causing it that way. I'm not specifically saying you should use slackware's cd either, I just mean to try a different version of cfdisk, really (although as I said that one always worked for me). BTW... markmm1975 - he/she just said above your post that she/he tried to cfdisk /dev/hda specifically, athough I'm pretty sure it will cfdisk hda by default when no argument is specified...

lost_packet · n00b Joined: 29 Dec 2002 Posts: 19

I had an old Mandrake 7.0 cd so I tried to setup my partitions from it. It appears that it couldn't detect the drive. This is starting to look like it all stems from my onboard raid controller (Abit kt7a) not allowing the drive to be detected properly. I feel like an idiot for spacing raid support in the install guide.

I tried to add support for the highpoint controller by using the code below (after logging into root)

Woland · Posted: Mon Dec 30, 2002 3:41 am Post subject:

lost_packet · n00b Joined: 29 Dec 2002 Posts: 19

lost_packet · n00b Joined: 29 Dec 2002 Posts: 19

Well no go on both issues.

I swapped the ide from the raid controller to a normal one and it still said I didn't have permission to write to the drive....so that rules out the highpoint controller being a factor.

I also tried to mount the existing partitions and got a message that they couldn't be found in two sub-directories of /etc/

Any other ideas other than just answering yes to "do you wish to start with a zero table" and see what happens?

EDIT-forgot to mention that I tried disabling DMA as noted in another post...no go.

Tiber · Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2002 2:49 pm Post subject:

Use partition magic.

This is an XP game that they play with you (possibly only when upgrading, it doesn't seem to bite a lot of people -- did you upgrade from Win2k at some point?). When I installed Gentoo and then upgraded to XP, it re-arranged all my partitions. I'm not kidding. The data wasn't physically moved, but the partition IDs were all changed and all the meta information was hosed.

I'm sorta suprised you haven't gotten a bad magic error from cfdisk. Usually at the top of the screen it says (from memory): "BAD MAGIC: Disk has both XXXX and YYYY magic." You mostly see it if you used a BSD partitioning utility on the drive and then try to use a Linux utility ("Disk has both BSD and Linux magic"). I'm pretty sure it threw something similar before I sorted out the partition mess XP made.

If you feel like taking the easy way out, grab yourself a copy of Partition Magic from http://www.powerquest.com/partitionmagic/. The hard way out is to hose the MBR (and possibly the disk itself) so you start with reasonably sane meta information. Partition Magic is also nondestructive whereas cfdisk is plenty destructive when it thinks it's "fixing" something. Partition Magic also makes boot disks, which are really nice for when you totally hose up your FS. ;-)

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Current project machine: Alpha 433A (433mhz EV56)

lost_packet · n00b Joined: 29 Dec 2002 Posts: 19

did you upgrade from Win2k at some point?[u]
nope, I always do a fresh install to avoid problems

[i]The hard way out is to hose the MBR (and possibly the disk itself) so you start with reasonably sane meta information.
On a Windows box, formatting the mbr is pretty safe and easy to recover from if anything goes wrong. We were kind of thinking along the same lines, but I just haven't gotten around to doing it until today. I formatted the mbr and then booted back into gentoo......when we ran cfdisk I got the same error about not having permission to write to the disk, then it went into do you want to start with a zero table. I answered no and it listed the drive as only 128Mb. strange

I have tried making all my linux partitions using partition magic 8.0, leaving the XP NTFS alone. No matter if I make them ext2, fat, or unformatted it still produces the same no permission error.

I don't really know what to do from here except backup all my data and try formatting the drive, but that's a time consuming pain in the ass to say the least.

I appreciate all the comments and suggestions. If anyone has some crazy ideas, throw them out, I'll try almost anything. (just don't tell me to stand on one leg and cluck like a chicken during boot

)

Tiber · Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2003 2:37 am Post subject:

At this point, it's obvious Saturn is ascending into your house and causing much turmoil.

At least, that's what the fortune cookie at lunch said, I figured I'd pass it along and hope you got something out of it.

Oh, it also said that if it's a maxtor drive and has or had been configured with the MAXBLAST program, you'll encounter the 128mb thing. :-)

I still say you should grab a copy of partition magic.
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--Josh

Current project machine: Alpha 433A (433mhz EV56)

lost_packet · n00b Joined: 29 Dec 2002 Posts: 19

Oh, it also said that if it's a maxtor drive and has or had been configured with the MAXBLAST program, you'll encounter the 128mb thing
woohoo magic fortune cookie readings!
The drive is an IBM Deskstar and it was originally formatted with a standard win98 boot disk, then ntfs during the XP install.

I've got a copy of PM 8.0. I wonder if just resizing the main partition will fix some strange error, or whatever is giving me problems, or I have to completly format and start over.