Arch Linux

jlr1701

Member

From: Anchorage, AK

Registered: 2010-08-01

Posts: 19

Website

[SOLVED]Unable to partition drive

Hey everybody,

I am attempting to install Arch on an old Acer Travelmate 8100 notebook computer. For some reason, partitioning the hard drive fails. This is a brand new 320GB SATA drive that I just installed as a replacement for the too-small original 100GB drive, so an issue with the drive itself seems unlikely. I apologize, but I don't recall the exact error message I got, but I used the first option on the menu to automatically setup the partitions and entered the sizes I wanted when asked. What I have now, according to cfdisk are these partitions:

sda1 - boot - primary - Linux - 213.86MB
sda2 - primary - Linux swap / Solaris - 271.44MB
sda3 - primary - Linux - 15734.97MB
sda4 - primary - Linux - 303850.07MB

sda1 is the /boot partition, sda2 is swap, sda3 is the / partition, and sda 4 is /home. I'm still pretty new to Linux partitioning schemes, and I'm not sure why the install is failing here when it went flawlessly on my desktop system. Does Arch have a problem with notebook hard drives? The partitions seem to have been created okay, so is the issue a failure to set mount points?

I can certainly start from scratch to grab the error messages, but what other info would be helpful?

Thanks,

Jeff

Last edited by jlr1701 (2010-08-14 18:40:10)

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: [SOLVED]Unable to partition drive

I'm afraid I can't help much w/o the exact error messages.

jlr1701

Member

From: Anchorage, AK

Registered: 2010-08-01

Posts: 19

Website

Re: [SOLVED]Unable to partition drive

Well, I tried again and this time the auto-prepare partitioning process worked. I'm mystified as to what the problem was, but glad it is working now. The install is proceeding. Downloading packages now. *shrugs*