Problems with fdisk when installing SuSE 7.1
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Hi, I've been having some problems installing SuSE 7.1 and i was wondering if anyone here could help me... I'm installing from CD having booted from floppy. The installation process runs fine until i get to the partitioning section. My machine has the following partitions: 5GB linux (redhat) 512mb linux swap 2G NTFS (win2k pro) 3GB FAT32 Disk geometry (as reported by BIOS and linux fdisk - C 1401 H 255 S 63). The disk is a 11GB IDE Maxtor. I want to keep the same partition structure but replace the old linux distro (redhat 6.0.1) with SuSE 7.1 and dual boot with win2k. However, the partitioning program in the SuSE installer doesn't recognise *any* of these partitions. It simply behaves as if the disk were completely empty. This occurs in both normal and expert mode. If i try to create partitions anyway, it allows me to proceed but when i come to format and copy files to these new partitions i get error messages about invalid partitions. At this point i booted the rescue system from the CD. When i ran fdisk from the shell i got the following message: "Warning: too many partitions (16, max is 8)" and when i displayed the partition table i got a list of 8 partitions labeled "a" to "h" with various junk parameters and a file system type of "4.2BSD". If i try to delete any of these partitions fdisk segfaults. If i try to create a new partition fdisk segfaults. If i try to verify the partition fdisk segfaults. If i try to create a new DOS partition table it has no effect. I've tried running fdisk-q instead. Same result. I've tried running the old fdisk from the redhat install - this works fine. I deleted everything and set up the partitions from scratch using this fdisk, booted up the SuSE installer and got the same problem. I tried a copy of cfdisk from Debian 2.2 - this works fine, but the SuSE fdisk still fails in the same way. I've tried totally scrubbing the disk (using DOS fdisk create a new FAT32 partition over whole disk, reformat, delete partition table) and i still get the same result. Redhat and Win2k both work fine but the SuSE fdisk program seems to have a real problem with my hardware. Has anyone here encountered anything like this, and/or has any suggestions? (I've tried using Partition Magic 4.0 - that didn't work either...) TIA, Jon -------------------------------------- FREE ANONYMOUS EMAIL! Sign up now. http://www.subdimension.com/freemail
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YES!!! I have been having trouble mounting removable media such as LS-120 super floppies and SCSI Read/Write Magneto Optical cartridges (RWMO). I was able to mount these in SuSE 6.3 once I read the SuSE Support Database article on Iomega ZIP drives showing that you need to mount the fourth partition; i.e.. "sdb4" "hdb4" BUT now in SuSE 7.1 "fdisk -l /dev/sdb" shows crazy output on these removable cartridges. fdisk -l output: "Disk /dev/sdb: 64 heads, 32 sectors, 121 cylinders Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 ? 293349 586697 300388839+ cf Unknown Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?): phys=(803, 35, 15) logical=(293348, 30, 16) Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings: phys=(803, 35, 15) logical=(586696, 60, 30) Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary: phys=(803, 35, 15) should be (803, 63, 32) /dev/sdb2 ? 293349 586697 300388839+ cf Unknown Partition 2 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?): phys=(803, 35, 15) logical=(293348, 30, 16) Partition 2 has different physical/logical endings: phys=(803, 35, 15) logical=(586696, 60, 30) Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary: phys=(803, 35, 15) should be (803, 63, 32) /dev/sdb3 ? 293349 586697 300388839+ cf Unknown Partition 3 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?): phys=(803, 35, 15) logical=(293348, 30, 16) Partition 3 has different physical/logical endings: phys=(803, 35, 15) logical=(586696, 60, 30) Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary: phys=(803, 35, 15) should be (803, 63, 32) /dev/sdb4 ? 293349 586697 300388839+ cf Unknown Partition 4 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?): phys=(803, 35, 15) logical=(293348, 30, 16) Partition 4 has different physical/logical endings: phys=(803, 35, 15) logical=(586696, 60, 30) Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary: phys=(803, 35, 15) should be (803, 63, 32) This is a DOS formatted cart (128MB) that works fine in W98. This output is clearly wrong! The output of fdisk -l on an LS-120 DOS formatted floppy is similarly confused. I have asked this quest on this list before and got no responses. I think we have found a REAL BUG! virek wrote:
Hi,
I've been having some problems installing SuSE 7.1 and i was wondering if anyone here could help me...
I'm installing from CD having booted from floppy. The installation process runs fine until i get to the partitioning section. My machine has the following partitions:
5GB linux (redhat) 512mb linux swap 2G NTFS (win2k pro) 3GB FAT32
Disk geometry (as reported by BIOS and linux fdisk - C 1401 H 255 S 63). The disk is a 11GB IDE Maxtor.
I want to keep the same partition structure but replace the old linux distro (redhat 6.0.1) with SuSE 7.1 and dual boot with win2k. However, the partitioning program in the SuSE installer doesn't recognise *any* of these partitions. It simply behaves as if the disk were completely empty. This occurs in both normal and expert mode.
If i try to create partitions anyway, it allows me to proceed but when i come to format and copy files to these new partitions i get error messages about invalid partitions.
At this point i booted the rescue system from the CD. When i ran fdisk from the shell i got the following message: "Warning: too many partitions (16, max is 8)" and when i displayed the partition table i got a list of 8 partitions labeled "a" to "h" with various junk parameters and a file system type of "4.2BSD". If i try to delete any of these partitions fdisk segfaults. If i try to create a new partition fdisk segfaults. If i try to verify the partition fdisk segfaults. If i try to create a new DOS partition table it has no effect.
I've tried running fdisk-q instead. Same result. I've tried running the old fdisk from the redhat install - this works fine. I deleted everything and set up the partitions from scratch using this fdisk, booted up the SuSE installer and got the same problem. I tried a copy of cfdisk from Debian 2.2 - this works fine, but the SuSE fdisk still fails in the same way. I've tried totally scrubbing the disk (using DOS fdisk create a new FAT32 partition over whole disk, reformat, delete partition table) and i still get the same result. Redhat and Win2k both work fine but the SuSE fdisk program seems to have a real problem with my hardware.
Has anyone here encountered anything like this, and/or has any suggestions? (I've tried using Partition Magic 4.0 - that didn't work either...)
TIA,
Jon
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Peter B.Van Campen
Peter_B@vancampen.org
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Hi Peter,
Considering that my old version of fdisk (from RedHat 6.0.1) worked
fine, i would assume that this problem is fairly recent. I must admit
i'm still a little doubtful as to whether this really is an fdisk bug -
surely more people than just the two of us would have encountered it?
It also seems a little weird that it just affects removable media and my
(non-removable) hard disk drive. :-)
Also, your garbage fdisk output is a bit different to mine. The results
i was getting seemed to suggest fdisk detecting multiple BSD disklabels
(as far as i can tell, the error message originates from this part of
the source code).
I'm wondering whether my problems could be caused by my HDD geometry
being incorrectly detected as this is the only thing i've not checked
out yet... I'll have a look at that tonight.
If this is a bug, then who do we report it to? SuSE? Or is fdisk
maintained independently? (Excuse my ignorance...)
Finally, can you think of a work-around that would allow me to install
SuSE? Is it possible to start yast, then exit and setup my
partitions "by hand" from a shell (using my old fdisk) before restarting
yast to continue the install procedure?
Jon
Quoting "Peter B. Van Campen"
YES!!! I have been having trouble mounting removable media such as LS- 120 super floppies and SCSI Read/Write Magneto Optical cartridges (RWMO). I was able to mount these in SuSE 6.3 once I read the SuSE Support Database article on Iomega ZIP drives showing that you need to mount the fourth partition; i.e.. "sdb4" "hdb4"
BUT now in SuSE 7.1 "fdisk -l /dev/sdb" shows crazy output on these removable cartridges.
fdisk -l output: [ - snipped - ]
This is a DOS formatted cart (128MB) that works fine in W98. This output is clearly wrong!
The output of fdisk -l on an LS-120 DOS formatted floppy is similarly confused.
I have asked this quest on this list before and got no responses.
I think we have found a REAL BUG!
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Hi. I've got a D-Link DU-R100 USB radio, which works beutifully in W98 and W2000. I'd like to know if someone has made it work under linux. I use Suse 7.0 with kernel 2.4.2. At http://linuxusbguide.sourceforge.net appears: "D-Link USB FM radio support The D-Link USB FM radio driver uses the Video4Linux interface, similar to the webcams discussed above. If the appropriate device node entries do not exist, you should create them: mknod /dev/video0 c 81 0 mknod /dev/video1 c 81 1 mknod /dev/video2 c 81 2 mknod /dev/video3 c 81 3 ln -s /dev/video0 /dev/video After plugging the radio in, all you should you need to do is to start up an appropriate application - I normally use kradio and KTuner from KDE, although any Video4Linux radio application should work successfully." This is a very short explanation: kradio and ktuner are programs that refer to internal radio cards on the ISA or PCI bus, so they access i/o ports, which is very different to the USB bus. 'lusb' gives: Bus 001 Device 002: ID 04b4:1002 Cypress Semiconductor R100 Radio Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 1.00 bDeviceClass 0 Interface bDeviceSubClass 0 bDeviceProtocol 0 bMaxPacketSize0 8 idVendor 0x04b4 Cypress Semiconductor idProduct 0x1002 R100 Radio bcdDevice 4.10 iManufacturer 1 iProduct 2 USB FM Radio iSerial 0 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 25 bNumInterfaces 1 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 4 bmAttributes 0x80 MaxPower 100mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 0 Interface bInterfaceSubClass 0 bInterfaceProtocol 0 iInterface 5 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 3 Transfer Type Interrupt Synch Type none wMaxPacketSize 8 bInterval 10 Language IDs: 0409 So appears that the chip is made by Cypress Semiconductor.
participants (3)
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Peter B. Van Campen
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virek
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Webillo Disperso