not able to configure partitions using fdisk.

manu_leo · Guru Joined: 20 Jan 2014 Posts: 513 Location: India

Hi Experts, I am in the process of installing Gentoo via livecd. I have a Dell R720 and I have mapped the Gentoo .iso image via IDRAC using Virtual CD/DVD option.

All works fine till here, the system boots up from the .iso and I configured the ip's to the server and able to connect to it via ssh.

Now when I am trying to configure partitions using 'fdisk' command, I am getting the below error message :-

livecd ~ # fdisk -l /dev/sda
-bash: /sbin/fdisk: Input/output error

I am not able to figure out as to why this is happening. Would appreciate all your help in getting this resolved for me.

krinn · Watchman Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 7470

Your virtual drive might be sda.

Try fdisk -l without any device to list them all and check sda is really the disk you think it should be.

manu_leo · Guru Joined: 20 Jan 2014 Posts: 513 Location: India

Thanks for looking into this, but fdisk does not work- wheather it is fdisk /dev/sda or just fdisk -l. I checked the HDD on the server and it is sda.

Please suggest if something else has to be checked.

Appreciate all your help.

john_deaux · Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2014 9:51 pm Post subject:

Just a n00b here, but have you tried using parted?

cwr · Veteran Joined: 17 Dec 2005 Posts: 1969

It sounds as if it can't write to the drive, which makes me suspect that it's trying to write to the
CD or something like it. Check around and see how many drives are present with eg: ls /dev/sd*

Will

janga8 · n00b Joined: 14 Jul 2014 Posts: 32

Hi, If fdisk is not working you can try using parted or cfdisk or you can download gparted live and boot that to do it from gparted.