Trouble intalling from LiveCD

[petemartin]

No matter what I do, I can't get the mepis installer to recognize the partitions I've setup for it. I get to the screen where you select the install partitions for root, home and swap and there are no partitions available.

I ran QTparted and formatted them, made the root partition active/inactive, mounted/unmounted it with no success. The liveCD works perfectly for me. I'm thinking that I'm just making some simple n00b mistake though...can anyone give me any suggestions on what to try?

Thanks

[devils casper]

hi petemartin, Welcome to the LinuxForums.

in which filesystem did you format partitions? post the output of 'fdisk -l' command here.

[minthaka]

I use to create at least an ext3 partition before I am attempting to install Linux. Have you formatted them as ext3 ?
Sometimes QtParted just won't work. Were there any error messages?
I think you didn't ever need to make partitions active. I never had to do that

[petemartin]

I formatted my HD1,0 partition as ext3, the lunix swap (formatted as linux swap) is on HD0,1. Windows XP is on HD0,0. Im going to use ext3 formatted partition as root and home since I have two other partitions I plan to install other distros to and may not keep Mepis anyways (if I can ever get it installed )

No error messages using QTparted, and I remembered to commit my changes. I'll have to take a closer look later when I get home.

[petemartin]

fdisk -l:

Disk /dev/hda: 41.1 GB, 41110142976 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4998 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *           1        4700    37752718+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2            4701        4997     2385652+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5            4701        4997     2385621   82  Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/hdb: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdb1               1        3264    26218048+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb2            3265        6528    26218080    6  FAT16
/dev/hdb3            6529        9792    26218080    6  FAT16
/dev/hdb4            9793       19457    77634112+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdb5            9793       14100    34603978+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb6           14101       18408    34603978+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb7           18409       19191     6289416    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb8           19192       19457     2136613+   7  HPFS/NTFS

I'm not sure exactly why there is an hda2 and 5, I only have two partitions on that drive...and they look like they're occupying the same physical location. Must be a Linux - swap thing? Also the first partition on hdb should be the ext3 one...not sure what's going on there.

Here's the KDF snapshot:

http://i104.photobucket.com/albums/m.../snapshot1.jpg

It doesn't even have a partition 4 (I'm so confused!)

Any help will be much appreciated

-Pete-

[devils casper]

there isn't any Linux Partition in second harddisk, hdb.
all partitions are either NTFS or FAT16. format partitions in ext3 filesystem.
hdb1, 2 and 3 are Primary Partitions and hdb4 is Extended Partition.
Entended Partition doesn't occupy space itself. it contains Logical Partitions ( hdb5,6,7,8 ).

re-format hdb2 and hdb3 in ext3 OR delete both and select 'free' space in partition section during installation.

[petemartin]

QTparted didn't work at all then. I formatted hdb1 as ext3 and it shows that everytime I go into QTparted. But on there is shows hdn1 as ntfs and the other two primary partitions as fat16 (windows shows all three as "RAW") I partitioned the disks with windows, maybe that's why QT can't format them properly.

If you look at the snapshot (photobucket link) it shows hdb1 as an ext3 file system...

Maybe I should format the partition with something else and see if that fixes my problem.

[devils casper]

try GParted LiveCD. its one of the best partition manager.

[minthaka]

Something smaller, but also worthy of trying:
http://www.freewarefiles.com/program_9_96_24632.html

[petemartin]

Good news!

I deleted and re-partitioned the primary partitions on hdb and formatted them as ext3 all with Gparted. I was able to install Mepis and Grub to milti-boot...I couldn't point it to the swap drive though, so I don't think I have a seperate swap now. Can I point Mepis at that swap drive to use it after I redo the partition or is that something that has to be done while installing?

Thanks for all your help everyone, I'm loving Mepis already (having fun customizing the look)