Ubuntu

Why can I no longer install Lucid to an extended partition?

Asked by Tim Cuthbertson

Up until about a week ago, I could install Lucid and use guided partitioning to use the largest contuguous free space. That free space was in my extended partition, /dev/sda3. That also contains my karmic /home filesystem in /dev/sda5. Lucid install would then create partition /dev/sda6 for / and /dev/sda7 for swap. I did it this way many times when installing the Lucid Alphas.

But, starting with the last couple of the Lucid Alpha3 dailies, it would no longer do that. It insisted that it could not create a partition with overlapping boundaries. I had to resolve the conflict by reducing the size of /dev/sda3 and then Lucid created new primary partition /dev/sda4 and installed to it.

So, my question is, does Lucid no longer allow installing to unallocated space in an extended partition, or has something else gone wrong with my system?

Thank you,
Tim

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Ralph Ulrich
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Ryan Maki (ryan.maki) said : 		#1

I have just installed my latest Lucid beta using the following system:

Primary 1: Windows 7 loader (existing)
Primary 2: Windows 7 ntfs (existing)
Primary 3: /boot JFS (formatted existing partition)
Logical 5: / JFS (new, from deleted LVM)
Logical 6: swap (new, from deleted LVM)
Logical 7: /home JFS (new, from deleted LVM)

I never "created" an extended partition, I simply selected that each partition after /boot was "Logical" instead of primary and the installer worked just fine. I installed directly over the top of a Fedora 12 LVM. I plan on re-running this installation again shortly as I'm testing the installer. (This looks somewhat like the partition format you are describing). I'll let you know if it bombs out when I ask it to re-use Logical 7 while re-formatting partitions 3, 5, and 6.

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Ryan Maki (ryan.maki) said : 		#2

Hi Tim,

Well, I have just re-installed over my existing partitions, listed in my earlier comment. The installer on the beta 1 i386 Lucid desktop disc didn't have any complaints. I elected to "Change..." partition 3,5,6, and 7. I re-formatted all but 7, I even changed formatting on partition 3 from JFS to ext4. The system re-installed and booted and my /home folder contents were still there.

Perhaps an earlier alpha version of lucid didn't properly re-format your logical partitions?

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Best Ralph Ulrich (eulenreich) said : 		#3

@Ryan, using just 4 primary partitions and inside LVM is fine

But @Tim:
Windows (Vista/Win7) changed to an incompatible partitioning scheme.
Even WinXp isn't compatible any more. For compatibility reason lucid
will change to 1MiB alignment also.

See bug:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/partman-auto/+bug/521045
More precisely describing my experience in:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gparted/+question/99298

I guess you might be hit by some changes of parted-2.2. Feel free to report:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/partman-auto

Revision history for this message
Tim Cuthbertson (ratcheer) said : 		#4

Ralph, Colin Wilson's last reply to your bug states that the change should be effective in Lucid as of 03/16/2010. That is probably when I started encountering my problem. However, there is no Windows of any kind on this disk drive or system. I am unsure how to proceed, but I want to go back to the old way of having new partitions for Lucid inside the extended partition, /dev/sda3.

Here are my current partitions. I have already removed Lucid and /dev/sda4 in preparation for next week's Lucid testing.

sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xdbc9dbc9

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 249 2000061 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda2 * 250 3984 30001387+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 3985 6474 20000925 5 Extended
/dev/sda4 6475 8906 19530752 83 Linux
/dev/sda5 3985 6474 20000893+ 83 Linux

Thanks,
Tim

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Tim Cuthbertson (ratcheer) said : 		#5

PS - Sorry, I created that last listing before I deleted partition /dev/sda4.

Tim

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Tim Cuthbertson (ratcheer) said : 		#6

Ok, here is what I had to do to resolve the problem.

1) Lucid's GParted 0.5.1 will not resize or make other changes to my extended partition (/dev/sda3).

2) Karmic's GParted resized the extended partition to include all remaining free space. Then, it allowed me to create partitions /dev/sda6 as ext4 and /dev/sda7 as linux-swap.

3) Lucid installer allows use of sda6 and sda7 using the Change partition choice.

So, things are pretty much doing what I want, but I cannot do it using the Lucid image only.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

Tim

Revision history for this message
Tim Cuthbertson (ratcheer) said : 		#7

Thanks Ralph Ulrich, that solved my question.

Revision history for this message
Ralph Ulrich (eulenreich) said : 		#8

As I said, the partitioning thing is on a big transitition, therefore bugs are expected. And your bug reports welcome....