i was too annoyed to collect proper information, but here's what i did: * boot from the 2006.0 i686 installer cd * start the gtk installer * choose an existing partition, assign mountpoint /, select "format". (also, fiddle with the partition size slider, but made sure it was on full extent) * continue as normal the installer modified my partition table and was unable to recreate its stored layout. it shoudn't even have touched the table, as i effectively changed nothing. the problem might be related to one strangeness in my setup, my partition layout is as follows * partition 0 (hda1), 10G ntfs * partition 2 (hda3), 40G extended primary filled with 4 other partitions. * partition 1 (hda2), 4.5G (to be formatted, was: vfat), so the order of partitions on the disk was not the same as their numbering. it created partition 0, and then, AFAICR, complained about sth like "end before start". it *wrote the table nevertheless*, rendering the majority of my partitions unsuable. hda2 was the partition i assigned to be /. i had to use gpart to recreate my partition table. a nice shock in the morning. falling back to manual installation, my trust in installers is gone.
Can you paste the output of 'fdisk -l' for your drive?
Here it is. Please note, however, that the hda2/3 weirdness is now corrected. When i ran the installer, what is now hda2 was hda3, and the other way round. Disk /dev/hda: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes 16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 116280 cylinders Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 * 1 20325 10243768+ 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/hda2 20326 107265 43817760 5 Extended /dev/hda3 107266 116280 4543560 b W95 FAT32 /dev/hda5 20326 24210 1958008+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/hda6 24211 43605 9775048+ 83 Linux /dev/hda7 43606 63000 9775048+ 83 Linux /dev/hda8 63001 107265 22309528+ 83 Linux
ah, and i remember i was smart enough to save the install profile, here's the excerpt relating partitions: <partitions> <device devnode="/dev/hda" disklabel="msdos"> <partition format="False" mb="10003" minor="1" mkfsopts="" mountopts="" mountpoint="" origminor="1" resized="False" type="ntfs"/> <partition format="True" mb="4437" minor="2" mkfsopts="" mountopts="defaults" mountpoint="/" origminor="0" resized="False" type="ext3"/> <partition format="False" mb="42790" minor="3" mkfsopts="" mountopts="" mountpoint="" origminor="3" resized="False" type="extended"/> <partition format="False" mb="1912" minor="5" mkfsopts="" mountopts="" mountpoint="" origminor="5" resized="False" type="linux-swap"/> <partition format="False" mb="9545" minor="6" mkfsopts="" mountopts="" mountpoint="" origminor="6" resized="False" type="reiserfs"/> <partition format="False" mb="9545" minor="7" mkfsopts="" mountopts="" mountpoint="" origminor="7" resized="False" type="reiserfs"/> <partition format="False" mb="21786" minor="8" mkfsopts="" mountopts="" mountpoint="" origminor="8" resized="False" type="reiserfs"/> </device> </partitions>
Eh, I see the problem already. The partitioning code isn't really made to handle a primary partition after an extended. It handles it in some places and completely ignores it in others. I've been meaning to take care of this for a long time, but as far as I know, this is the first time it's ever been a problem.
I've committed a fix to CVS that should allow the partitioning code to handle the case of a primary partition after an extended. If you feel adventurous, please give it a try by opening a terminal and doing '/opt/installer/misc/updategtkfe'. Please save your /var/log/installer.log and 'fdisk -l' before and after running the installer in case you have another failure.
i dont really feel adventurous any more, sorry. this definitely should be tested tho, loosing partitions is no fun. why did it touch my partition table after all? there were no changes to be made. also, a warning alert would be nice. i didn't want the installer to touch my partitions at all and would've stopped and reconsidered in case of an alert.
Normally, it wouldn't have. It was the weird layout that made it believe your layout had changed.
Fixed (supposedly) in CVS...closing.
Moving to Release Media/Installer.
