GUI installer can't read partition table of SATA disk[FIXED]

[proy]

Hi,

I am trying to install Gentoo from the liveCD. I downloaded the DVD image and burned it on a DVD. The DVD booted fine. Now when I tried to start the installation process I ran into a weird problem:

My drive is a MAXTOR SATA 80 GB drive. I have to use WinXP in one of the partitions (Company policy). So I can not auto partition the system. I created 2 ext3 partition and 1 swap partition for Gentoo. But unfortunately Gentoo installer can not find any partition in the disk.

I used fdisk -l to view the partitions and it showed fine. I can also mount some of the partitions (FAT32 and ext3 partitions). But the installer don't find the partitions.

From a post in the forum, I tried using gpart /dev/sda and this command showed some error. I am going to list the full output here:

Code: Select all

** Error: invalid extended ptbl found at sector(20996955).

Begin scan...
Possible partition(Windows NT/W2K FS), size(10252mb), offset(0mb)
Possible extended partition at offset(17249mb)
   Possible partition(Linux swap), size(1043mb), offset(18959mb)
   Possible partition(DOS FAT), size(20002mb), offset(20002mb)
   Possible partition(DOS FAT), size(10244mb), offset(40005mb)
   Possible partition(DOS FAT), size(10244mb), offset(50250mb)
   Possible partition(Windows NT/W2K FS), size(15821mb), offset(60494mb)
End scan.

Checking partitions...

* Warning: more than one extended partition: 4.
Partition(OS/2 HPFS, NTFS, QNX or Advanced UNIX): primary
Partition(Linux swap or Solaris/x86): invalid
Partition(DOS or Windows 95 with 32 bit FAT, LBA): invalid
Partition(DOS or Windows 95 with 32 bit FAT, LBA): invalid
Partition(DOS or Windows 95 with 32 bit FAT, LBA): invalid
Partition(OS/2 HPFS, NTFS, QNX or Advanced UNIX): primary
Ok.

Guessed primary partition table:
Primary partition(1)
   type: 007(0x07)(OS/2 HPFS, NTFS, QNX or Advanced UNIX)
   size: 10252mb #s(20996888) s(63-20996950)
   chs:  (0/1/1)-(1023/254/63)d (0/1/1)-(1306/254/59)r

Primary partition(2)
   type: 015(0x0F)(Extended DOS, LBA)
   size: 29753mb #s(60934545) s(35326935-96261479)
   chs:  (1023/254/63)-(1023/254/63)d (2199/0/1)-(5991/254/63)r

Primary partition(3)
   type: 007(0x07)(OS/2 HPFS, NTFS, QNX or Advanced UNIX)
   size: 15821mb #s(32403040) s(123893343-156296382)
   chs:  (1023/254/63)-(1023/254/63)d (7712/1/1)-(9728/254/61)r

Primary partition(4)
   type: 000(0x00)(unused)
   size: 0mb #s(0) s(0-0)
   chs:  (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)d (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)r

I also found some info about 5-6 pin of the SATA drive. But I really don't want to open up the box as that may violate my warranty license. Can you help me?

By the way, I installed Red Hat 7.3 quite a few times and also installed Fedora Core (2,4,5) and Mandriva. By far Gentoo has the best approach to GUI Installer. Great Job. I am really looking forward to using Gentoo and Portage.

Regards.

[yngwin]

Don't use the GUI installer. As you experienced, it is far from perfect yet. Just do the 'manual' install, following the handbook. It's the way most of us learned to work with Gentoo, and it's the most flexible.

[proy]

Man, I am stunned! I have been to many forums and many of them were super active. But by far your response time is the smallest. Thanks a lot. I am going to read the handbook now. I will ask you again if I run into other problems.

[proy]

Hurrah! Finally the installation has started. I just wanted to share my experience here:

The only reason I chose the liveDVD is that I use an extremely slow connection. The top speed is 10KBps while 90% of the time the speed is only 3KBps. So a networkless installation was just what I wanted. But the SATA problem made me very sad. After yngwin's reply I started looking at the manual installation procedure. And found out that I have to download the stage 3 tar ball which is more than 100 MB. I would have to wait at least a day to go to the next step of the installation.

So, I tried to find out what the actual problem with my hard drive is. I know a little fdisk, so tried to find out and fix the problem with fdisk first. But fdisk said that everything is OK.

So I rebooted to WinXP and installed a trial version of Partition Magic. When I started PM it reported an error which was much clearer. "The end of the extended partition is overlapping with another primary partition". So I fixed the problem with PM. Deleted my existing ext3 and swap partitions.

Then I rebooted with the liveDVD and vola! the installer shows my partitions. Selected the recommended layout button and all the partitioning problems were solved.

So I am happy. But I would like to know if there are some softwares like Partition Magic for Linux. If anybody know about any S/W plz let me know.

Now that the installation hurdle is over, I am going to play with Portage. Wish me luck!

Bye.

[omkardp]

Hi,
I am trying to install gentoo livecd-amd64-installer-2006.1 for my pentium d. I have exactly the same problem with my sata disk (seagate 80G) The gui installer shows my disk as a clean drive without any partitions. In fact I have several partitions of etx3, reiser, fat32 on my disk. fdisk -l shows them properly. proy solved it by shear luck but thats not a definite solution. I have partitioned my disk with Acronis Disk Director Suite and had no problem/error in doing so. Even slackware 10.2 installer detected them. During booting of live cd, I have checked output of 'dmesg' it shows enabling my sata disk, recognizing my partitions etc. Then whats with the gui installer? whats a definite, reliable solution for this? I had same issues with ubuntu installer. I dont know where the proble lies.
I searched this forum an got only two people complaining about the issue. One is this thread and this is other; which were unable to give a clear solution to the problem.
Whats other options of installing amd64 gentoo with a networkless install ?

thanks.