Ok, it appears that I don't get the error if i don't use initialize. However, there appears to be a problem using 'primary' partitions if you don't use initialize.. I simplified my partition section to be something very simple and then worked my way back up to what I wanted. For reference, the original partition section was what YaST2's autoinst creation program gave me. This seems to work ok.. i then modified it to use primary partitions and that also seemed to work after a bit of fiddling.. <use>all</use> also seems to have helped things quite a bit. So what exactly does 'initialize' do and when should it be used? For future reference, the new (working) xml section is included below sig... Thank you (both) for the help. john.c - -- John Clemens jclemens@virtualiron.com <partitioning config:type="list"> <drive> <device>/dev/sda</device> <initialize config:type="boolean">false</initialize> <use>all</use> <partitions config:type="list"> <partition> <filesystem config:type="symbol">reiser</filesystem> <format config:type="boolean">true</format> <partition_type>primary</partition_type> <partition_id config:type="integer">131</partition_id> <mount>/</mount> <size>4GB</size> </partition> <partition> <filesystem config:type="symbol">reiser</filesystem> <format config:type="boolean">true</format> <partition_type>primary</partition_type> <partition_id config:type="integer">131</partition_id> <mount>/disk1</mount> <size>4GB</size> </partition> <partition> <filesystem config:type="symbol">reiser</filesystem> <format config:type="boolean">true</format> <partition_type>primary</partition_type> <partition_id config:type="integer">131</partition_id> <mount>/disk2</mount> <size>4GB</size> </partition> <partition> <filesystem config:type="symbol">swap</filesystem> <format config:type="boolean">true</format> <partition_type>primary</partition_type> <partition_id config:type="integer">130</partition_id> <mount>swap</mount> <size>max</size> </partition> </partitions> </drive> </partitioning>