Inst.Cntr: Failed to prepair chosen partitions
Posts: 16
Hello,
I think I am going to really like Mepis. But, here's my problem. I am trying to to do a dual boot installation with Win98 on hda and Mepis on a 6GB second hard drive as hdb1 through hdb3 (with a Fat32 data partition as hdb4). I use the very nice resizing program in the Mepis Installation Center (Q--- something or other) to set up the partitions on hdb. hdb1 I intend for root, hdb2 for /home, and hdb3 for swap. All looks good and I keep going with the installation. I make sure to select hdb, then choose "Custom Install On Existing Partitions", and hit NEXT. The problem starts in number 2a "Choose Partition". I have three items to set: Root, Swap, and /Home. The drop down menus for Swap and Home work fine, giving me all the partitions as choices, but the selection for Root only gives me "None" for a choice. So I select "None" for Root, hdb3 for Swap, and hdb2 for /home. I tell it to go ahead. It formats hdb1, 2, & 3, and then tells me installation in progress. I gets to 3% and then pops up "Failed to Prepair Chosen Partitions. Returning to Step 1". So, that's as far as I am able to get. Any suggestioins? Thanks for the help.
Randy H
"None" still comes up as the only choice in (2a) root
Posts: 16
I ran fdisk and cfdisk from the Live CD console, but could not see any other partitions (like an old MBR). Then I deleted hdb 1-3 and recreated them in cfdisk (I left the Fat32 hdb4 intact), but when I go back to the Installation Center (Question #2a) I still get only one drop down menu choice for root, and that choice is "none". Thanks for responding.
Randy H
Partition type
Posts: 691
Are you making ext3 partitions for your Linux installation? I know there were problems with reiserfs in the past, not sure if support for it has been added yet. Also select your root partition first, then swap, then Home. What sizes are the partitions you are trying to create?
If you got a 6Gb drive spread across 4 partitions none of the partitions may be big enough to be selected as root, I`m not sure what the minimum size is for the root partition, but I know there is one. The whole system will go in the root (so of course it won`t let you install with none selected here) with the exception of your own user desktop settings and configuration which are stored in home, so the root partition should be the biggest, for example on my system just with the default install without adding any additional software I`m using 2.5gb in the root partition, so I imagine the minimum would be around 3gb.
Swap partition is fairly small as a general rule about 2x the ammount of Ram that is installed in your system, so for most computers a 250-400mb swap partition is all you need.
Home partition, just the config files themself don`t need much space about 8Mb per user, but it depends on how much downloasds and personal stuff (pics,Music,Movies, ect.) you plan to store in your users home folder.
Problem Solved
Posts: 16
Hello, and thanks for responding,
Shinwise, you were right when you mentioned the size of root being important. Warren e-mailed me back and said that root has to be at least 2.5GB. Once I made the changes in QTParted and brought hdb1 up to 2.5GB all was well, and I was able to select that partition in the drop down menu. Installation went smoothly, and I am now getting to know Mepis.
Thank you for the help.
Randy H
The first partition hdb1 shou
Posts: 405
The first partition hdb1 should be labeled "/" (which stands for root)
hdb2 needs to be /home
hdb3 will be swap
Will it let you label the hdb1 partition as "/"? If not, try deleting all existing partitions on the disk, make the whole disk is labeled as "free". There may be an old MBR or something on the disk, you could open a console while the live disk is booted, then run "fdisk /dev/hdb" and then "p" to see if it shows any existing MBR or partition. If it doesn't, then try creating the partitions with fdisk.