Failed to prepare chosen partitions

Gene, I'm confused. You state, "My disk layout consists of 4 primary partitions...containing various LINUX distros." I'm assuming that you mean your desired disk layout since you previously stated that you could not get QTParted to work. Are you starting from a blank hard drive? If so, why are you creating all these partitions with a test distribution? Why not first test with one or two to make sure that the CD works?

QTParted definitely has a problem if you try to repartition a drive that's in use. If you want/need that many partitions, I would recommend wiping the entire drive. Then QTParted will allow you to create multiple partitions in one pass rather than create a partition, reboot, create another partition, reboot...

Yes, the BSD partitions could cause problems. I would create the space and partition it as ext2 or ext3 and when you get ready to load *BSD, then reformat them. They will cause problems for mounting in Linux. I believe there's an extension for Linux that allows reading a *BSD ufs, but I don't recall what it is. Once your various Linux distros are loaded, modify /etc/fstab to comment out the *BSD partitions.

Also, HOW BIG is the total drive?

Jon

Jon...thanks for your reply!

My computer is one I built about three years ago. It has a 120GB disk. I partitioned my disk when I built it as I described above. I install many various Linux and BSD distros, including MEPIS.

I have installed many different versions of MEPIS on many different partitions and have never had any problems with any of the installations. I have never had to use QTParted in the past...just select the partition I wanted to install on and away it went...no problems. The only reason I used QTParted this time is because I couldn't get the installer to accept the partition I chose.

I can't remember if I have attempted to install MEPIS in the past with a BSD distro installed on my computer. Maybe there is a quirk in the MEPIS installer concerning BSD.

Thanks for your help, Jon.

-Gene-

When I first installed I had something similar happen And am not sure why to this day, I do believe it had something to do with the partitions getting mounted.

Be sure to boot from the CD when running Mepis/ Qparted and do not go into any hard drives to view them or have them mounted by the system, just boot from CD and Then run Qparted and partition your drives as you've stated using ext3. for primary and logical and extended for you other distros. and don't forget to commit so that the qparted will partition the drives, if you don't commit then the partitions have not been created, and when you finish and try to install you will get this type of error, also be sure to choose the custom feature when it gets to that point so that you can select which drive/partition to install Mepis on.

I'm still not sure if following this exact process will do anything diffent for you, but I did have similar problems and cannot remember if it was because I forgot to commit in qparted.
I mean I set up all the drive and noticed the commit button the second or third time around and figured out that this is the way to make all the changes I've made to the partition perminent.

But in anycase your simptoms are very similar to what I had.

I also in the past had this problem with a faulty burn, and also a hard drive going bad.

Hope this helps.

Agent86...thanks for your reply.

I am not trying to re-partition the whole disk. I have several of the installed distros I wish to keep. I am only trying to use an existing and available partition to install MEPIS on. This method of installation of MEPIS has always worked in the past.

Using QTParted does not solve the problem. I have never needed to use QTParted in the past...just chose a partition and MEPIS used the chosen partition and installed perfectly.

I still suspect the BSD partition may be the problem...who knows.

Thanks for your help, Agent86.

-Gene-

I just dug out my downloaded copy of MEPIS-3.3.1-1 and attempted to install it just as I have been trying to do with MEPIS-3.4-1.rc1.

It installs perfectly. No partitioning problem at all. I'm typing this message from it now.

I thought maybe my BSD partitions were the problem...but not to MEPIS-3.3.1-1.

So...what's the problem? MEPIS-3.4-1.rc1 won't get by the partition selection section. Is BSD the reason? I don't know. Maybe Warren or one of the developers will see this thread.

-Gene-

It's the extended partion. I use to have the same problem with recent versions of mepis. Since then i have changed to just the standard 4 partions and have had no further problems.

Kerry...thanks for your reply.

In my previous post where I said that MEPIS-3.3.1-1 installed fine. I installed it on extended partition 14 with no problems.

So I attempted to install MEPIS-3.4-1.rc1 on primary partition 3. This partition had PC-BSD-1.0 on it. I did 'mkreiserfs /dev/hda3' and then ran 'cfdisk' to change the type from BSD to linux. The install came up with the same 'Failed to prepare chosen partition' error. I then ran QTParted (from within the installer), chose /dev/hda3 and formatted it with ext3. No go...same error.

I still at this time have FreeBSD-6.0 on partition 2. MEPIS-3.3.1-1 installed fine on extended partition 14 with FreeBSD on partition 2 and PC-BSD on partition 3. MEPIS-3.4-1.rc1 won't install on either a primary or an extended partition (with BSD on partition 2 and/or 3).

I still think the BSD partition is the problem...although it is hard to believe that I am the only person in the world with this problem.

Thanks for your help, kerry.

-Gene-

Try downloading and burning another cd. Some of the repos were incomplete at the time people were downloading. Make sure you burn slow(4X) and use a cdr not a cdrw.Good luck.

Kerry...OK, that's worth a try.

I'll let you know what happens...probably on Saturday.

-Gene-

I have re-downloaded MEPIS-3.4-1.rc1 and checked the md5sum. Its OK. The md5sum was OK on the first download also.

Tried to install on partition 14...no go...same error.

MEPIS-3.3.1-1 will install perfectly on partition 14. There has to be a problem with the install routine in MEPIS-3.4-1.rc1.

I guess I'll just wait for the final version of MEPIS-3.4 to come out and give that a try.

Thanks to all who helped.

-Gene-

Gene,

This problem has occurred in at least two previous releases of Mepis. I did all the things you are doing now, and finally gave up and went back to an earlier release that worked.

The next release after ont that did this, always seemed to fix the problem.

I never did find out what caused the problem, and it was only on certain systems. I could install it fine on another system with a similarly partitioned drive with no problems, and other people didn;t have the problem either.

I'd suggest waiting for rc2 and see if it is working by then. If it isn;t, make lots of noise so it is fixed before final.

The Mepis team have a habit of not fixing known faults until AFTER a final is released.

RossD.

RossDV8...thanks for your reply.

RossDV8, did you have a BSD partition on your computer when you had your problems? I keep wanting to blame the BSD partition for the problem...but who knows.

I am going to wait for the next release. Hopefully the problem will have been corrected by then.

Thanks for your comments and advice.

-Gene-

Hi Gene,

No, I had no BSD partition. My main computer had 2 hard drives.

hda had an NTFS partition with XP on it, and a FAT32 partition for shared data.

hdc had SimplyMepis and was divided into /root, /swap and /home.

One other computer was a twin of this one, right down to the brands of drives and RAM etc. Most of the other machines were et up the same at the time.

One computer had two hard drives, with hda having XP, a FAT32 shared data partition, linux swap and /home plus several root partitions for different distros, and hdc was set up with several /root, one /home and one /swap for the same reason.

This was the computer for testing weird new distros.

What happened was that I did a normal upgrade install, that is, I installed the latest Mepis and told it to save /home. I got a message along the lines of "could not prepare partition", so I tried reinstalling the older release. fortunately that worked.

I tried the same thing on the twin computer and it installed ok, so it was not a hardware issue. I also tried the other computers and most installed, but one had the same error, so it didn't seem to be a software issue.

To this day I have no idea what caused it, but it has happened to me once only since then, and fortunately I could still install an earlier.

The next release went smoothly, so I simply got rid of the CD so I couldn't install it by mistake.

I am sorry you had this problem, but I am glad it was not only me! LOL Unfortunately, I have stopped testing MEPIS because the team no longer takes user input and requests seriously. These days I just wait until there is a major change and do a reinstall then.

A typical example is that for over a year I have been asking the team to make the live CD eject when you do a shutdown, or at the end of an install, when you need to reboot. I am sick of having CDs jammed in the tray of my drive.

Almost all the other live distros do this, but the Mepis team's response was that they didn't think it was possible because it is a live CD, and that I could simply do a reboot on CD and take the CD out when GRUB comes up.

This is so they can avoid one or two lines of coding....

Another request has been for a changelog with each release. There is a changelog on the site, but the last entry was December 2004!

Users need a changelog released WITH the distro release, especially if we are testing the release. These are just a couple of the reasons I no longer bother testing.

As I have said before though, despite the apparent ignorance of the people creating it, it is still the only distribution that is almost ready to use as soon as you install it.

The web development software, Quanta, was removed long ago, so one major tool for home users is gone, but Synaptic doesn;t take long to fix that and a few other things that are needed for daily work.

I'll be interested to see how you go installing the next release.

RossD.

RossDV8...Thanks for your reply...quite a reply at that!

After reading your comments I don't know what to think about BSD...may be a problem, maybe not.

I'll wait for the next release and see how that goes...I'll post another comment on this thread.

Hopefully Warren or his developers have read this thread.

Thanks again, RossDV8.

-Gene-

Hi Gene,

Well, I'm glad to see that this is a lively thread

One suggestion I would make, a modification on Agent86's first suggestion. Since you are only needing to modify a partition to place 3.4-1 into, try this. Use a 3.3.1 Live CD to boot, don't mount/check/read any of your current partitions (so that they remain inactive). Then use the 3.3.1 version of QTparted to "adjust" the partition(s) that you need. Once the partitions have been prepared, reboot and use the 3.4 Live CD to attempt the install.

I really don't think the BSD partitions are causing the problem. I don't currently have BSD loaded on any of my partitions, but I have played with it a bit in the past

The only problem that I would see with BSD is that you might not be able to mount and read the partitions while in Linux.

Jon

Jon...thanks for your comments. Sorry I haven't answered sooner...been busy.

I tried your suggestion. I used MEPIS-3.3.1 to format the partition and then rebooted with MEPIS-3.4...no go...same error message.

I have tried every method I can think of to prepare a partition for MEPIS-3.4. I have used my Debian install to delete, re-create and format a partition, formatted with Reisers or Ext3...MEPIS still gives me an error message. I haved done the very same thing with QTParted within the MEPIS-3.4 install...still won't work.

Since MEPIS-3.3.1 will install perfectly and MEPIS-3.4 won't install at all, it seems to me that MEPIS-3.4 has a bug. Same computer, same partition layout.

I'm going to wait for the next release and see how that goes. I'll post a message as to what happens.

-Gene-

Gene, thanks for replying. Grr, it definitely sounds "interesting". I'm out of ideas

Yes, wait for the next release candidate or "official" copy, test it and see what happens, and let us know.

Jon

Hi,

I came across some posts, about a month ago, that suggested that FreeBSD can cause hard drive geometry problems. You might want to try googeling on this issue.

In addition, Mepis 3.4-1 caused some HD geometry problems on my box.
I really should have wrote the error message down. It was something like "lhs and chs values are not equal". Partition Magic fixed the errors and everything worked fine. I installed 3.4-1 on a box that had XP, OPENBSD, and Islack on it.

Peace,

John

No go...won't install...same problem as MEPIS-3.4.1-rc1.

Again...MEPIS-3.3.1 installs perfectly...on hda14!

MEPIS-3.4.1 and 3.4.2 will not install at all on any partition.

I have recently installed other Linux distros...Debian 3.1 unstable and PCLinusOS. Both installed perfectly...no problems.

So logically...it would appear that the MEPIS-3.4 installer has a bug in it...who knows!

I will try the final release of MEPIS-3.4 and see how that goes.

-Gene-

I _think_ this has something to do with reiserfs, qtParted, and something in the newer versions of Mepis. But I'm no expert so don't listen to me - this is just anecdotal evidence.

On my computer, Mepis 3.3.1-1 installs fine.

But when I tried to install mepisLITE 3.3.2-1rc2 I ran into the same problems as you, and I _don't_have BSD or any exended partitions. I had 4 primary partitions with a different Linux distro on each one.

Here is what happened:

I used qtParted to reformat hda3 and then tried to install MepisLITE using reiserfs. After a few seconds it aborted and said, "failed to prepare partition, going back to step one." I thought I got a bad format so I tried again. Still no go. So then I tried reformatting in both ext2 & ext3. But when I ran the Mepis installer it froze at 2%. I even wiped the entire drive and started over with 3 new primary partitions and still no go.

After much mucking around and many aborted or frozen installs, I came to this, possibly wrong, conclusion. Something is wrong with qtParted on the newer liveCD. The only way I was able to get a successful install was to format in ext2, then _reboot_ and then install Mepis _without_ running qtParted. And even then, this only works with ext2. I was never able to install on ext3 or reiserfs.

The reboot is vital. If I run qtParted and then go straight to the install without rebooting, it won't work.

Note to Mepis- I have an empty 5GB partition on hda, so if Warren wants me run some sort of test or try to recreate this situation I would be happy to help. Just email me - cycletourist_at_cox-internet_dot_com.

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Bob L Hunter
bicycle tourist, bookworm, linux newbie
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bohu...thanks for your comments.

I hadn't tried Ext2...tried it...doesn't work either.

Since you don't have a BSD installation I guess my theory of BSD being the problem is wrong.

Since I can install MEPIS-3.3.1 with no problems while 3.4.1 and 3.4.2 won't install at all it seem logical that there is something wrong with the 3.4 installer. But why aren't more people having problems like I am? What is unique about my machine? But again, 3.3.1 will install perfectly.

I'll post back when I give the 3.4 a go.

-Gene-

it is impossible for me to know what the problem is but my guess is the new installer is less tollerent of small glitches in formatting or partition tables or whatever.

Linux is a strange beast.

---------------------------------------
Bob L Hunter
bicycle tourist, bookworm, linux newbie
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Hi Bob and Gene. I haven't yet committed to a full load of Mepis 3.4, other than in a "virtual environment". However, I want to comment on formatting, QTParted, and things like that there

I had an experience a couple months back where I tried to "resize" a partition. I didn't post the gory details, but I lost my entire /home partition

Anyway, my suspicion is that QTParted, or some sub-section of it has become a little "buggy". I don't mean to lay any blame on the QTParted folks, 'cause Heaven knows I could't write something like it. I just seem to remember earlier versions of the package where I didn't have to think so hard. Now, I have to start, change-one-thing, commit, quit, reboot, slurp coffee, and repeat...

I know, this doesn't help your problem any. Just a shotgun blast in the dark (so ya better duck).

Jon

Back some time, quite a few releases ago there was a known problem with QTparted and installs. I was using the install disk of Mandrake 8.2 (found out later that Mandrake 9 and 9.1 worked also), to partition the drives.

You might like to try that if you are not sick of messing around yet. If nothing esle, It might tell you if the prob is QTparted ir something else.

I have not bothered installing a recent Mepis, because I had to reinstall the 3.4.x stuff so many times and got sick of them not working. I am back on 3.3.something and it is excellent.

RossD

Latest 3.4-3-rc2 doesn't work...same problem as all 3.4 versions.

-Gene-

Is it possible that your swap is the problem? See:

http://www.mepis.org/node/8878

Irv

irvcobb...You're right...SWAP is the answer.

I made another attempt today to install MEPIS...3.4-3rc2. I chose the root partition and the 'swap' choice was 'none or existing partition'. I had always been choosing my swap partition, hda5. This time I let it remain 'none or existing partition'. And wonder of wonders, it began to install.

After installing, I configured the sound with Alsaconf...it works. I configured my printer with CUPS...it works. My internet connection was set up automatically by DHCP...it works. Off to a good start.

Its been very frustrating getting to this point...but its finally installed.

Thanks to all who helped.

-Gene-