partitioner won't see partition

**doglover56** · January 30th, 2009

Hi. I want to install Ubuntu 8 to my second hard drive. There are 6 logical partitions in one extended partition. sdb5 has 10G in it. It is FAT32. It can be seen by windows, partition magic, gparted, cfdisk. But the partitioner won't see it. Actually, more precisely the partitioner actually offers a guided choice to resize sdb5 and install to it. But when I go to manual partitioning, sdb5 is not on the list. Strange. Actually, I don't want to install to that particular partition, but since the partitioner is not seeing it I am afraid something is wrong and it will mess up.
Anyone understand this behavior?
Thanks,
IMF

**lisati** · January 30th, 2009

Originally Posted by doglover56

Hi. I want to install Ubuntu 8 to my second hard drive. There are 6 logical partitions in one extended partition. sdb5 has 10G in it. It is FAT32. It can be seen by windows, partition magic, gparted, cfdisk. But the partitioner won't see it. Actually, more precisely the partitioner actually offers a guided choice to resize sdb5 and install to it. But when I go to manual partitioning, sdb5 is not on the list. Strange. Actually, I don't want to install to that particular partition, but since the partitioner is not seeing it I am afraid something is wrong and it will mess up.
Anyone understand this behavior?
Thanks,
IMF

About the only things that come to mind at the moment is if the partition wasb't cleanly "unmounted" by the last OS to access it, or that something odd is happening with the partition table. Anyone else?

**tommcd** · January 30th, 2009

Since /dev/sdb5 can be seen by GParted, use the GParted live CD to format the partition as ext3. You will also need a swap partition also. The swap can be 512mb-1GB. You could go with less swap if you have a lot of memory. After formatting /dev/sdb5 as ext3 boot up the Ubuntu live CD and see if it sees the partition. If that does not work, use the GParted live CD and delete the partition and then recreate it in the newly created free space as a ext3 partition + a swap partition.
Ubuntu should easily see a fat32 partition though. Try booting up the Ubuntu live CD, open a terminal (applications > accessories > terminal) and run:

Code:

sudo fdisk -lu

This will list all the partitions on your hard drives.

**doglover56** · January 31st, 2009

I will put below the fdisk -lu results from Ubuntu 6 and Ubuntu 8. Please note as review that Ubuntu 6 (with drives as hda and sdc) works fine on this P3 Dell 4100 PC, but Ubuntu 8 (with drives as sda and sdc) do not as I have inquired on prior messages, with no resolution. The immediate problem is that the partitioner in any version of Ubuntu 8, Xubuntu 8, including alternate, will not see sdc5 even though fdisk and all other manner of things see it. It had been suggested that h(s)da would not work because it has too many partitions on it, with SCSI having a limit of 15. I am not sure that is true, but then I wonder why fdisk lists all 22 partitions. Does it have its own disk access? Well anyhow, I thought then I would install on the second drive, with only a few partitions, but it still does not read the drive correctly. So, below are the v6 hd and v8 sd outputs. They look identical to me.

Thanks in advance
IMF

--------------------------------------

v6

Disk /dev/hda: 60.0 GB, 60022480896 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7297 cylinders, total 117231408 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 63 176714 88326 1b Hidden W95 FAT32
/dev/hda2 224910 24515189 12145140 17 Hidden HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda3 * 24563385 36853109 6144862+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda4 36853110 117226304 40186597+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 36853173 40949684 2048256 b W95 FAT32
/dev/hda6 40949748 41062139 56196 6 FAT16
/dev/hda7 41062203 51311609 5124703+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/hda8 51311673 53367929 1028128+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/hda9 53367993 55424249 1028128+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/hda10 55424313 57480569 1028128+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/hda11 57480633 59536889 1028128+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/hda12 59536953 71826614 6144831 b W95 FAT32
/dev/hda13 71826678 75923189 2048256 1b Hidden W95 FAT32
/dev/hda14 75923253 79007669 1542208+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda15 79007733 80084024 538146 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda16 80084088 90333494 5124703+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/hda17 100583028 102044879 730926 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda18 102044943 106928639 2441848+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda19 106928703 109274129 1172713+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda20 109274193 114157889 2441848+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda21 114157953 116503379 1172713+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda22 116503443 117226304 361431 83 Linux

Disk /dev/hdc: 20.4 GB, 20491075584 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2491 cylinders, total 40021632 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdc1 16065 38074049 19028992+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdc5 16128 21848399 10916136 b W95 FAT32
/dev/hdc6 21848463 27712124 2931831 83 Linux
/dev/hdc7 27712188 28692089 489951 83 Linux
/dev/hdc8 28692153 30250394 779121 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hdc9 30250458 36114119 2931831 83 Linux
/dev/hdc10 36114183 38074049 979933+ 83 Linux

----------------

v8

Disk /dev/sda: 60.0 GB, 60022480896 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7297 cylinders, total 117231408 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x3f05b0d5

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 63 176714 88326 1b Hidden W95 FAT32
/dev/sda2 224910 24515189 12145140 17 Hidden HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 * 24563385 36853109 6144862+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda4 36853110 117226304 40186597+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 36853173 40949684 2048256 b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda6 40949748 41062139 56196 6 FAT16
/dev/sda7 41062203 51311609 5124703+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda8 51311673 53367929 1028128+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda9 53367993 55424249 1028128+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda10 55424313 57480569 1028128+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda11 57480633 59536889 1028128+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda12 59536953 71826614 6144831 b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda13 71826678 75923189 2048256 1b Hidden W95 FAT32
/dev/sda14 75923253 79007669 1542208+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda15 79007733 80084024 538146 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda16 80084088 90333494 5124703+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda17 100583028 102044879 730926 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda18 102044943 106928639 2441848+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda19 106928703 109274129 1172713+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda20 109274193 114157889 2441848+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda21 114157953 116503379 1172713+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda22 116503443 117226304 361431 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 20.4 GB, 20491075584 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2491 cylinders, total 40021632 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xea1aa9c7

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 16065 38074049 19028992+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdb5 16128 21848399 10916136 b W95 FAT32
/dev/sdb6 21848463 27712124 2931831 83 Linux
/dev/sdb7 27712188 28692089 489951 83 Linux
/dev/sdb8 28692153 30250394 779121 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb9 30250458 36114119 2931831 83 Linux
/dev/sdb10 36114183 38074049 979933+ 83 Linux

**tommcd** · January 31st, 2009

It looks like fdisk sees all the partitions correctly. I don't know why the partitioner in Ubuntu 8.x won't see them.

Have you tried partitioning and formatting the drive the way you want with GParted live CD first, and then booting up the Ubuntu 8.x live CD and installing to the partition you want?

Or delete the partition(s) and recreate them with GParted, and then install Ubuntu to the newly created partitions?

Just out of curiosity, have you tried the Ubuntu 8.x alternate install CD? It is a shot in the dark, but I wonder if you would have better luck with the alternate install CD.

**avtolle** · January 31st, 2009

From memory, only 15 partitions will be seen by the Linux operating system, even though more exist. Anyone with more knowledge, please feel free to correct me.

**doglover56** · January 31st, 2009

Hello.
1. If linux will only see 15 scsi partitions, then why is fdisk seeing all of them?
2. This is consistent with different utilities having different behavior. fdisk will see a sda23 and/or create a sda23, but mkfs won't format an sda23. Similarly, the partitioner will see or create it, but crashes at the format stage. Also, the partitioner puts little exclamation points next to them, and can't read their filesystem.
3. The behavior is the same whether using alternate or regular disks, and whether Ubuntu 7 or 8, since both use sda will Ubuntu 6 uses hda.
4. Even with that, I am not sure why the troubles on the first disk are causing me not to see the first partition on the second disk.

Thanks,
Irwin