Ubuntu not seeing partitions?!

Hello everyone,

I, in my desire to live life on the edge, have decided to run three operating systems: Windows 7, Vista (installed first), and good ol' Ubuntu 8.10. Vista was giving me issues at first, but my present situation is Vista and Windows 7 in two paritions, a 9GB recovery partition, and the last 30 GB I want for Ubuntu.

Here's my issue: When I load the Live CD, everything goes smoothly until I have to choose where Ubuntu installs. It doesn't see the free partition for some reason. Instead, it sees "111.79 GB unallocated". I have no idea where this number is coming from, I have done the math, and there is no combination of partitions on my drive to give that number.

If I select Manual at the install menu, the only option is to install a number of GB far larger than the 30 I plan to. Can anyone help me?

BTW, originally I had the Linux partition no formatted to any file system, but then I tried formatting it to NTFS, and still nothing.

 

In order for a partition to exist, it must be "marked" on the hard drive platter, so to speak. Otherwise, it is just unallocated space; you can think of it as "unclaimed" space. From this unallocated space you have to create a new partition.

 

Okay, so I need to make a file system, right? Which should I make it? NTFS or FAT32?

 

For Linux, ext3. For Windows, NTFS.

 

Is there a partition tool I can use in Vista (not Partition Magic), that will let me partition in ext3? I can't use GParted either, since I don't want to mess with the other partitions and I can't see them....

 

Okay, so I found software that would do it and made the 30GB partition in the ext3 format. HOWEVER, the Live CD still isn't seeing that partition that I've set aside. This is troubling. I'm retiring for the night, but any suggestions will be implemented in the morning. I will follow up then. Thanks for your help, Bog!

 

You can make a bootable CD image of Gparted, which is a very useful disk management tool. That, or you can use the built-in feature in the LiveCD installer when you choose to manually configure the disks; the latter option is actually the easiest. Once you have your 30GB ext3 partition, the LiveCD should recognize it. Btw, you should allocate the rest of the 100GB or so of unallocated space. A portion of it should be set aside for use as a swap partition for Linux.

For example, you could have:

*Windows Vista (NTFS)* *Windows 7 (NTFS)* *Ubuntu (ext3)* *swap (swap)* *Data (NTFS)*

 

Maybe you should have tried this program to dual boot for you:

http://wubi-installer.org/

 

Are you starting from scratch or is Vista and 7 already installed?

I would use System Rescue CD to do this stuff. It has GParted and a bunch of other applications included. It also supports ntfs-3g which allows reading/writing-to Windows partitions. You can create an ext3 partition with it and when you sort everything out with that CD, Ubuntu should be able to 'see' everything. Do you see a 'boot flag' when you run the LiveCD? It sounds like you don't. At least, one of the Windows OS partitions usually has one.

 

cat etc/fstab

fdisk -l

pull both those up and paste here if you could.

 

You should also make a small partition for swap.

 

The rest of the HDD is allocated, which is one of my main concerns. I have four partitions, all primary:
9 GB recovery partition - NTFS
30 GB Windows 7 Beta - NTFS
154 GB Windows Vista - NTFS
30 GB Ubuntu - ext3
This is how I want it, but Ubuntu is the one I'm having issues with.

I started with Vista already installed. Then added Windows 7. This is fine, works great. My hard drive already has an ext3 partition. When I use the Live CD and get to the "Install" option, it doesn't see the ext3 partition made for it. I'm not sure what it's seeing. I do not know what a boot flag is, could you help me understand?

I can't upload a screenshot for some reason but here's what I get:
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ cat etc/fstab
cat: etc/fstab: No such file or directory
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ fdisk -l
Cannot open /dev/sda
Cannot open /dev/sdb
Cannot open /dev/sdc
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

 

I believe the proper commands would be:
cat /etc/fstab
sudo fdisk -l

 

The output for that:
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ cat /etc/fstab
aufs / aufs rw 0 0
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs nosuid,nodev 0 0
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x2e444cf5

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 1217 9772032 27 Unknown
/dev/sda2 1217 5132 31449088 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 * 5133 25271 161766517+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 25272 29186 31447237+ 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/sdb doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/sdc: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x44fdfe06

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 1 60801 488384001 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

^I'm 100% sure the italicized section is my 500GB external HDD. Not sure about the rest, though.

 

I'm not quite sure what the issue was/is;
So even now, when you do a manual install w/ Ubuntu "/dev/sda4" is not selectable to use as a "/" partition??

 

Is that what I want to do? Try a manual install that way? Could you walk me through the steps to do that? And those other partitions, sda1, sda2, and sda3 are my other three partitions?

 

Well - from my memory, the Ubuntu installer from the LiveCD should ask you how you want to install, either automatically or manually in terms of how it will install to your HD. If you choose manual you *should* go to some sort of screen that shows all of your partitions, you want to leave sda1, 2, and 3 alone, and select sda4 to use as "/" partition.
After you go to next it should show a screen that says sda1, 2, 3 will not be touched, and that sda4 will be formatted and installed to, or something to that effect.

Also, understand with no SWAP partition (I'm gonna assume you have at least 1 or 2GB RAM memory. If less than that I would advise a SWAP partition) you also won't be able to suspend your computer.

Also, understand that with no "/home" partition it will be necessary to backup any important configuration files, personal files if you decide to reinstall/upgrade Ubuntu via a new LiveCD in the future.

 

Right. Okay, so I'm trying to Install, I get to the "Install" part and choose Manual. I then come to the "Prepare partitions" menu. I have the option to make a new partition table (I don't know what this is but I don't think I want it to do that. If I select /dev/sda, which lists nothing at all about sda1, 2, etc, (all that shows up is /dev/sda and /dev/sdb) and try to move forward, the installer says "No root file system is defined. Please correct this from the partitioning menu."

Also, I managed to find someone else that wanted to tri-boot in my same scenario. He found a problem with the boot loader and his steps to fix it are:
Choose manual install and choose the correct partition. Once at the review screen, choose Advanced. Install the boot loader to the Ubuntu partion, NOT MBR. Boot back into Vista and install EasyBCD. Add an entry for Linux there.

I don't know if this effects anything at this point since I can't even get Ubuntu to install, but I felt this worth mentioning.

To answer your two "understand" notes:
I have 4 GB of ram, but I have no reservations about making a SWAP partition, how do I do it, and how big should it be? The same question holds for the /home partition, which I've read about a bit.

 

That's odd.
After you select manual instead of guided, it should list something like this
/dev/sda
/dev/sda1
/dev/sda2 NTFS
/dev/sda3 NTFS
/dev sda4 EXT3

When running the LiveCD, if you go to Partition Editor (System->Administration), does it see all your partitions?

 

All it lists is 111.79 GB unallocated. I have no idea where this number is coming from.
At the top of GParted it says /dev/sda though, so I think I'm in the right place.

 

When was the last time you booted into Vista or Windows 7?
Unallocated means there is no data on that harddrive.

Yet fdisk reports the four partitions :S
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 1217 9772032 27 Unknown
/dev/sda2 1217 5132 31449088 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 * 5133 25271 161766517+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 25272 29186 31447237+ 83 Linux

 

I boot into them often to try different things with the partition. I booted into win 7 this morning and Vista last night to format the planned Ubutntu partition to ext3. They are both there and in fine, working order.

 

I can't think of a reason why fdisk would be able to show your partitions but gparted/installer could not.
Perhaps you had a bad LiveCD burn... :S
I'm not familar AT ALL with partitioning w/ Vista either, so maybe that has something to do with it.

As for your other questions with partitioning, if desired, I would use a SWAP partition anywheres between 2-4GB. "/" partition realistically only needs to be ~10GB or less if you have a seperate /home partition (I have quite a bit of software installed, I'm currently only using ~6GB). After SWAP and "/" I would give the rest of the partition to /home.

You can only have 4 primary partitions so you would have to make sda4 an extended partition. With my suggestions it would look something (if you had say 30GB total) like
/dev/sda4 extended
/dev/sda5 / ext3 10GB
/dev/sda6 /home ext3 18GB
/dev/sda7 SWAP 2GB

 

I thought about a bad LiveCD too. But I did a check and there weren't any errors found, so I don't know what the problem could be.
I'll keep trying, thanks for your help, proxima!

 

I got it. I re-formatted that partition, formatted it to ext3, then used the alternate install CD. I'm using the GRUB bootloader, and everything boots just fine. Thanks for all your help everyone!