partitions not detected during 10.04 install

[kingair_six]

hi,

trying to install 10.04, once i reach the dialog where i'm supposed to select partitions for mount/install, the installer reports my HDD is empty. it wants to create a partition table and proceed from there.

in fact, my 1TB disk is 50% full and contains 10 partitions, including /boot /home, swap (which i wanna reuse) and 2 other OS partitions.

these partitions do show up when running nautilus in 10.04 live, also "fdisk -l" shows them - the installer does not.

tried the dmraid fix described in several posts - no success.

any help / clue greatly appreciated, thanks :)

kingair_six

[rajasthanub]

i need help on same issue ; at time of partition it shows " no operating system on computer" ;;;;;
as far as i can think this might be because of problem with grub2 .
i am having dual boot ,after installing reinstalling windows there was no ubuntu so i made changes to bootloader as directed by forum.... i think problem is from there

[kingair_six]

i forgott to add, i also have a dual boot via a modified grub2 ;) sounds like that's the key?

[dino99]

the "alternate" iso let you tweak your installation as you want.
i always format before installing (partedmagic)
unetbootin is a nice solution

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1467891&page=2 post 14

some more into signature below too

[kingair_six]

having read up on your posts, I will try the alternate installer, however I do not get why prepartitioning should help me?

I already have the partitions I want to use in place, but can not tell Ubuntu to use them from the installer.

[dino99]

having read up on your posts, I will try the alternate installer, however I do not get why prepartitioning should help me?

I already have the partitions I want to use in place, but can not tell Ubuntu to use them from the installer.

if installer dont see your partitions, well its clear to me that your partitioning , if exist, is wrong. Reread the post, you have to understand it first (the installer on cd is known to be bad)

[kingair_six]

I see what approach you are taking as described in the other thread. but my system is already running and the partitions are neither wrong nor damaged. they've been set up via GParted and have prooven reliable in a production environment. therefore I see no point in repartitioning, considering the amounts of data I'd have to shovel around onto other drives to avoid data loss. I'm currently loading the alternate disk as adviced.

[dino99]

i've reread your 1st post: 10 partitions, how many primary yet ?

[kingair_six]

four primary partitions. as many as possible.

[frantid]

maybe try mounting them with nautilus outside of the installer?

[kingair_six]

that does not work in live environment either. however, it shows them in the left bar.

[frantid]

click on them in the left bar, that will mount them see if the installer continues.

Make sure you are doing the manual partition selection -- in the installer that is...

[kingair_six]

mounting via nautilus by clicking on them does not work...

[frantid]

open either disk utility or gparted and run a check on your partitions.

also try mounting via the terminal to see what error you get.

since your system was working, I suspect the cd

[kingair_six]

the system is working, i'm just trying to install 10.04 as an additional os on my 2nd linux root partition (which is clear to use). i veryfied the md5sum, tried 2 different downloads, tried the alternate cd and a usb-booted live version. neither worked. will try mounting via cli in live though.

[kingair_six]

tried mounting drives via cli... worked fine. much to my suprise, mounting from within nautilus also worked (hasnt done so previously). exception is the second linux root. Getting some strange error there:


Error mounting: mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda5,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so

dmesg reports:
EXT4-fs (sda5) - no journal found.

however, that should not prohibit linux from identifying the rest of the partitions in the installer?

am now trying mkfs -t ext4 /dev/sda5 ... see what that does.

EDIT: nothing. working ext4 on /dev/sda5 does not fix the problem.

[frantid]

hmmmm

fsck /dev/sda5

[kingair_six]

device is perfectly fine, both from live as well as 9.10 environment.

fsck is totally happy.

[kingair_six]

bug's already been on launchpad from a beta release:


see launchpad.net (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/559110)

[srs5694]

Try using a filesystem other than ext4fs. There are lots of choices. For a typical root (/) filesystem with a separate filesystem for user files, try ext3fs or ReiserFS. If the partition will hold lots of big files, try XFS.

[Mohammad_Khalid_Hussain]

I think I have the same problem found over here (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1468171).