Partition Trouble Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon

The installers, both the one in the desktop and the one in the alternate CDs, require that there are 2 primary partitions available for installation. The first one is to contain the root partition (and defaults to contain the whole installation) and the other one is for the swap partition (usually created as an extended partition, extended partitions are subpartitoins on top of an already existing primary partition). To solve your problem, you'll have to backup the contents of at least two partitions, delete them and let the installer do its thing on the free space.

If you can only dispose of one partition, say one of the possibly available partitions is the recovery partiton for your MS Vista installation) and have enough RAM, you can try to install without a swap partition and use thttps://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq#head-75ffcb00cefe143fc380f84d7ea9203f16a596d0 as a guide to add a file swap. It will be a bit slower than using a dedicated partition but it will work just fine.

Well, I would have been glad if that could solve the problem. As I have already mentioned, the Ubuntu CD, shipped by Canonical is healthy without any errors and I have installed it in another Lap without any problems.

As suggested by you, I deleted all the partitions and made the disk raw. Then proceeded to install Ubuntu, but of no use. The same message.Same installer hanging up at 46% of "starting up Partitioner" step after choosing keyboard layout and Gparted perpetually searching for drives....

Then I wrote a new MBR by using Recovery console in Win xp.....

Still the same trouble.....

Someone suggested that my partition table might have errors....

Is that so?????

I am new to linux, so is not aware of commands text based installation, is there any way that it can help?

Also when attmpting the second step, this is the message I get

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mkswap /mnt/512Mb.swap
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 445943 kB
no label, UUID=fdc40c29-dd45-4e55-abc8-4263ad1095c1
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo swapon /mnt/512Mb.swap
swapon: /mnt/512Mb.swap: Invalid argument
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

When I tried collecting the info, the result is:
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal: 1025936 kB
MemFree: 16932 kB
Buffers: 38452 kB
Cached: 689728 kB
SwapCached: 0 kB
Active: 259520 kB
Inactive: 629708 kB
HighTotal: 121248 kB
HighFree: 308 kB
LowTotal: 904688 kB
LowFree: 16624 kB
SwapTotal: 0 kB
SwapFree: 0 kB
Dirty: 0 kB
Writeback: 0 kB
AnonPages: 161064 kB
Mapped: 58888 kB
Slab: 33816 kB
SReclaimable: 24744 kB
SUnreclaim: 9072 kB
PageTables: 2128 kB
NFS_Unstable: 0 kB
Bounce: 0 kB
CommitLimit: 512968 kB
Committed_AS: 941576 kB
VmallocTotal: 114680 kB
VmallocUsed: 6172 kB
VmallocChunk: 107936 kB

How much RAM do you have?

Could you download and give the 8.04 Ubuntu alternative-installation CD a try? It should be out now. See if that changes anything.

     O.K. I am learning it the hard way. Lost the data in a 4 GB Pen Drive in the process. All right.

   System Information:
   Model: Compaq Presario C754 TU
   Processor: Intel Celeron 1.8
   RAM: 1 GD DDR2
   Hard Disk: 120 GB (5400rpm)

   When I used fdisk it showed the following message

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

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 14593.
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)

   I partitioned the disk using cfdisk.
   Made 3 primary and one logical partition.

   first was intended for root (10 GB)
   Second for Swap (4 GB)
   Third for home (25 GB)
   Rest for normal use

   Then I wrote the partition table to sda1 (10 GB)

   Here is the partition information

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x31a431a3

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 1245 10000431 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 1246 1743 4000185 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 1744 4855 24997140 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 4856 14593 78220485 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 4856 14593 78220453+ 83 Linux

   Here is the partition info by sfdisk

Disk /dev/sda: 14593 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 0+ 1244 1245- 10000431 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 1245 1742 498 4000185 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 1743 4854 3112 24997140 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 4855 14592 9738 78220485 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 4855+ 14592 9738- 78220453+ 83 Linux

   Here is the Partition table info (fdisk)

Disk /dev/sda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 14593 cylinders

Nr AF Hd Sec Cyl Hd Sec Cyl Start Size ID
 1 80 1 1 0 254 63 1023 63 20000862 83
 2 00 254 63 1023 254 63 1023 20000925 8000370 83
 3 00 254 63 1023 254 63 1023 28001295 49994280 83
 4 00 254 63 1023 254 63 1023 77995575 156440970 05
 5 00 254 63 1023 254 63 1023 63 156440907 83

Fdisk says that there are 5227 unallocated sectors in the partition table.

Still the same trouble while installation. I don't understand this. I have done everything.
Now the partitions are all linux partitions and everything seems to be fine. What the hell is the problem with the installer?????

Well, learned it in the hard way.....

cant describe all the steps, but used testdisk, fdisk, sfdisk and cfdisk.....

Partition table was psychically incorrect.....

Learned the basics of everything.....

And now I have my chweetie tuxie in my system......

Got an exam, so thats all....

Thanks a lot for the support, buddies!!!!!!!!

I'm loving this world....

Will give you all a hand once I master this.....

Thanks, Alejandro, thanks spike......

Anyone with the same trouble do mail me.....

i've tried numerous times to install ubuntu 7.04 and 7.1 in my system. my cds are also from canonical and i verified them to find ok. with pentium dual core pc, intel965 motherboard, 1gb ram and 250gb samsung hdd, i can't install it. what is wrong?

in regard to ur identification of partition table as possible source of the problem, i installed fedora 7 on the same system and it installed without any glitch. why?

pls mail me ur suggestion.

Hi, skumargreen.

I have been facing simillar problem. Please share your experience in detail.