steve_c Posted October 23, 2004 Report Share Posted October 23, 2004 Hi all - me again! :/ I've now burnt my iso and they boot fine so that;s the first problem out of the way - I think I'm now having RAID problems... I formatted a 10GB partition as FAT32 for use with Mandrake and rebooted. Setup started fine and took me through the language setup. Then there was an error about there being a bad magic number on hdg. I clicked "no" as it warned me I would lose all data. I think that the hd was scanned as there was a lot of activity for a couple of minutes and then it ended with setup telling me that "I can't find any room to install" I have an Asus P4B533-E motherboard with an onboard "Promise MBFastTrak Lite controller" seen here: http://www.asus.com.tw/support/download/it...SLanguage=en-us (PDC20276 Drivers for Win 95/98/ME/2K/NT4.0/XP ) Now when setup was starting I'm sure I could see that it detected the drives - it certainly detected the controller as I see the device name briefly. So has anyone got any ideas? Thanks in advance guys. Steve. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted October 23, 2004 Report Share Posted October 23, 2004 I formatted a 10GB partition as FAT32 for use with Mandrake and rebooted. you need to format your hd with mandrake (use partition manually) to ext2, ext3 or reiserfs. otherwise, linux won't have a space to install to. is this problem before you get to the partition-selection or after this screen? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve_c Posted October 23, 2004 Author Report Share Posted October 23, 2004 thanks for the fast reply - I'm very new to this so not a lot of that made sense - how do I partition manually to format the mandrake drive before setup starts? Once I get that done I should be on my way. Thanks again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a13x Posted October 23, 2004 Report Share Posted October 23, 2004 I recommend you make an ext3 partition from Windows first (that is, if you want to dual boot), using Partition Magic. Then install Mandrakelinux to the ext3 partition. I've heard that Diskdrake or whatever it's called has some issues so it's better to be safe than sorry. B) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve_c Posted October 23, 2004 Author Report Share Posted October 23, 2004 Thanks for the info - I have partition magic - how do I convert the drive to ext3? It's FAT32 Logical drive at the moment. My C drive is logical NTFS and my games drive is primary for some strange reason. Ta. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaraeez Posted October 23, 2004 Report Share Posted October 23, 2004 Thanks for the info - I have partition magic - how do I convert the drive to ext3? It's FAT32 Logical drive at the moment. My C drive is logical NTFS and my games drive is primary for some strange reason. Ta. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Hi Steve, from what I can remember (PM8) you right click on the FAT32 partition within the PM window & convert to EXT32. Is this what you mean? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve_c Posted October 24, 2004 Author Report Share Posted October 24, 2004 Hi - when I right click and select convert, all I get is FAT or NTFS - Primary and logical are greyed out. I've got no other options - what is EXT3 anyway - as I said I'm fairly new at this. TIA! Steve. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve_c Posted October 24, 2004 Author Report Share Posted October 24, 2004 Hi again - using partition magic, I created a 10GB linux drive, ext3 and that went fine - I then rebooted and still got the same instalation errors telling me that there was no room to install. Is there any way I can tell from within install that mandrake has seen my drives? I'm still unsure as to whether my promise raid controller was spotted and set up succesfully. I am still getting the error about there being a bad magic number on hdg. I clicked "no" as it warned me I would lose all data. I think that the hd was scanned as there was a lot of activity for a couple of minutes and then it ended with setup telling me that "I can't find any room to install" I also remember a message about the info was too corrupt for setup to understand on the hd. Any help is greatly appreciated - I'd like to get this install done today. Thanks! Steve. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devries Posted October 24, 2004 Report Share Posted October 24, 2004 Don't create a ext partition but just leave the space empty. That should do it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve_c Posted October 24, 2004 Author Report Share Posted October 24, 2004 OK I'll give it another try and delte the ext3 partition from windows. brb ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpikeyKlitske Posted October 24, 2004 Report Share Posted October 24, 2004 (edited) Hi Steve, I have a comparable configuration as you have. This is how I tackled the problem. During install when mdk ask you to point a partition where to put it choose custom partitioning. In the next window u can delete the partition(s) you created earlier for mdk. next make sure to create one partition from the available space for mdk format ext3. also make 1 partition for the swap file. as rule of thumb this is 2x your memory. Click done and the install will continue and format the partitions for you and you should be all set. Note of caution: when clicking and deleting partitions make sure to point to the right partition to delete as all information will be lost on that partition. As to raid, i am not working on a raid configuartion ie i only have one sata drive. the asus bios defaults to raid config and i had to change that to ide. This is found on the advanced tab of the bios screen. Edited October 24, 2004 by SpikeyKlitske Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve_c Posted October 24, 2004 Author Report Share Posted October 24, 2004 Thanks for the reply and apologies as I now have 2 active threads :( I don't get to the point where I can choose a partition. I have tried the following: Using PM8 - created a 10GB Linux drive ext3 and a 500MB linux swap drive. Also tried with just empty space. The setup starts and I choose keyboard and also agree to the license, and the security options. Then I get a message saying: "I can;t read the partition table of device hde, it's too corrupt". It then tells me that it can go on and erase over bad partitions and in which case, all data will be lost - "error is unkown partition table on disk /dev/hde" Do you agree to lose all the partitions?" so I choose "No" -then there is disk activity for a few minutes and then I get another error message: "I can't read the partition table of device hdg and some of the above text and "error is bad magic number on disk hdg" do you agree to lose all the partitions?" I select no and there is more disk activity - I am then presented with a final error telling me that there is no room to install. So I'm pretty stumped - if I clicked yes to any of these messages I suppose I would lose my other partitions? Steve. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spinynorman Posted October 24, 2004 Report Share Posted October 24, 2004 Thanks for the reply and apologies as I now have 2 active threads :( I've merged the two threads. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve_c Posted October 24, 2004 Author Report Share Posted October 24, 2004 Thanks very much :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve_c Posted October 24, 2004 Author Report Share Posted October 24, 2004 Does anyone think this might work? http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:qHmpCM-...device%22&hl=en Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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