Bug 218357

Summary:	GTK+ Installer fails to read partition table from /dev/sdb
Product:	Gentoo Release Media	Reporter:	Robert Havens <RNHavens>
Component:	LiveCD/DVD/USB	Assignee:	Gentoo Release Team <releng>
Status:	RESOLVED INVALID
Severity:	normal
Priority:	High
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	AMD64
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Package list:		Runtime testing required:	---

Description Robert Havens 2008-04-19 02:17:27 UTC

The installer simply can not read the partition table of my second Western Digital Raptor HD.  Even after I used fdisk to remove all information the installer wasn't able to read the table.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Start GTK+ installer from the 2008 amd64 beta 1 Live CD.
2. Wait for the error message.
3. Oh nothing special, just let teh CD boot all by itself with no intervention.

Actual Results:  
An error message appeared saying... "There was an error loading the partition table from device /dev/sdb. It will not be displayed."

Expected Results:  
I would like to be able to see my second hard drive from the installer.

The hard drive is a Western Digital Raptor 10k RPM disk. (same exact model as sda)
Motherboard is an Asus A8n32-SLI Delux board.

Comment 1 Andrew Gaffney (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2008-04-19 02:29:35 UTC

Just because you clear the partitions doesn't mean there isn't still a messed up partition table on there. The installer is doing what it's supposed to do. Try the following:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=1

That will zero the first sector of /dev/sdb (where the partition table is), and allow the installer to use it.