Arch Linux

Nuwanda

Member

From: Montevideo, Uruguay

Registered: 2008-01-04

Posts: 22

Installer doesn't set filesystem type when creating a filesystem

I am new to the Arch community, so please forgive me if I am going about things the wrong way

I started the installation after creating the partitions that I was going to use (leaving the partitions unformatted), so I skipped the Prepare Hard Drive step.

When I got to the Install Bootloader step, I got "Error installing GRUB (see /dev/tty5 for output)".

I found out that the problem was that, when the installer created the filesystems in the Set filesystem mountpoints step, it didn't set the partition types to 0x83 (Linux, and in this case, ext3). I fixed it by going to Prepare Hard Drive and manually setting the filesystem type to 0x83.

At first I thought that this behavior was intentional, so I just added a note in the Beginner's Guide (in case someone else had the same problem). But perhaps this can be considered a bug in the installer.

Should I add it to http://bugs.archlinux.org/?

Thanks.

zenlord

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2006-05-24

Posts: 1,221

Website

Re: Installer doesn't set filesystem type when creating a filesystem

Nope, it's not a bug.
As I install Arch linux most of the time next to windows, I have also prepared my partitions before installing Arch. The correct thing to do is to enter the step 'prepare Hard drive' and then go to 'set filesystem mount points'. The previous steps can safely be ignored. Once these mount points have been defined, you can select and install packages, configure the system and install the bootloader.

Doing it like this, you can chose to keep the filesystem intact, i.e. without formatting it.
Zl.

Nuwanda

Member

From: Montevideo, Uruguay

Registered: 2008-01-04

Posts: 22

Re: Installer doesn't set filesystem type when creating a filesystem

It seems I did not make myself clear.

I did create the partitions before installing, but I did not format them. I left them unformatted at that point.

Afterwards, during the installation process, I let the installer format the partitions (in the Set filesystem mountpoints step) with ext3. The installer correctly created the filesystem, but did not set the partition type to 0x83 (ext3). If I then booted with the Arch CD, it correctly mounted the partitions. But GRUB did not.

byte

Member

From: Düsseldorf (DE)

Registered: 2006-05-01

Posts: 2,046

Re: Installer doesn't set filesystem type when creating a filesystem

The installer doesn't set partition types (83 is simply Linux, not ext3), (c)fdisk does. So that was your duty, if you said you created the partitions before.

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1000

Nuwanda

Member

From: Montevideo, Uruguay

Registered: 2008-01-04

Posts: 22

Re: Installer doesn't set filesystem type when creating a filesystem

83 is simply Linux, not ext3

I know, I said that in the first post

So that was your duty, if you said you created the partitions before.

mkfs doesn't set the partition type, so I guess you're right.
That did not seem intuitive to me, until I learned that creating a filesystem isn't necessarily on a partition.