13.2 Installation - Getting multiple errors upon creating filesystems

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Note for the absurdly sharp-eyed: Yes, my question is cross-posted from http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/197814/installing-opensuse-cannot-format-partitions. In my defense, it’s been weeks now. I’m beginning to lose hope.

SO. Trying to install SUSE v13.2 on a 120GB Kingston SSD. The drive is empty. It has no partitions and no data that I am aware of. I have tried to install multiple version of Linux, but all of them seem to fail in a similar way. Oddly, Windows has no such problem. It installs without issues. :confused:

So I’ll walk you through my installation proccess.

  1. Accept Installation Agreement

  2. Ethernet adapter and wireless dongle are detected. Neither are configured. I configure them.

  3. Yast takes its sweet time probing my hard disks

  4. Select “Include Add-on Products from Separate Media”

  5. OKAY. Partitioning time. SUSE wants to use btrfs on my root drive, but I don’t want to do that. I click “Create Partition Setup” and select the 120GB SSD. I set the root partition and the home partition to ext4
    Now the partition setup is as follows:
    Device ---- Size ------- Type --------- FSType Mount Point
    /dev/sdb1 - 156.88 MiB - EFI Boot ----- FAT – /boot/efi
    /dev/sdb2 — 2.01 GiB - Linux Swap — Swap - swap
    /dev/sdb3 - 20.00 GiB – Linux Native - Ext4 - /
    /dev/sdb4 - 89.63 GiB – Linux Native - Ext4 - /home

  6. Set Time Zone to Central

  7. Select CD drive for additional content

  8. Change desktop environment to XFCE

  9. Set up username and password

  10. Open SSH port and enable SSH service. Grit teeth. Click install.
    http://i.imgur.com/4yclGfV.jpg?1

I am immediately set upon by errors of all shapes, colors, and national origins. I have recorded them here.

Failure occurred during the following action:
Setting disk label of /dev/sdb to GPT

System error code was: -1007

/usr/sbin/parted -s --align=optimal "/dev/sdb" unit cyl mkpart primary fat32 0 19:
Error: /dev/sdb: unrecognised disk label

Failure occurred during the following action:
Creating volume /dev/sdb2

System error code was: -1007

/usr/sbin/parted -s --align=optimal "/dev/sdb" unit cyl mkpart primary linux-swap 20 281:
Error: /dev/sdb: unrecognised disk label

Failure occurred during the following action:
Creating volume /dev/sdb3

System error code was: -1007

/usr/sbin/parted -s --align=optimal "/dev/sdb" unit cyl mkpart primary ext2 282 2892:
Error: /dev/sdb: unrecognised disk label

Failure occurred during the following action:
Creating volume /dev/sdb4

System error code was: -1007

/usr/sbin/parted -s --align=optimal "/dev/sdb" unit cyl mkpart primary ext2 2893 14592:
Error: /dev/sdb: unrecognised disk label

And here it kinda stops for a bit and prepares a new wave of errors

Failure occurred during the following action:
Formatting partition /dev/sdb1 (156.88 MiB) with vfat

System error code was: -3030

/usr/sbin/parted -s --align=optimal "/dev/sdb" unit cyl mkpart primary ext2 2893 14592:
Error: /dev/sdb: unrecognised disk label

Failure occurred during the following action:
Formatting partition /dev/sdb2 (2.10 GiB) with swap

System error code was: -3030

/usr/sbin/parted -s --align=optimal "/dev/sdb" unit cyl mkpart primary ext2 2893 14592:
Error: /dev/sdb: unrecognised disk label

Failure occurred during the following action:
Formatting partition /dev/sdb3 (20.00 GiB) with ext4

System error code was: -3030

/usr/sbin/parted -s --align=optimal "/dev/sdb" unit cyl mkpart primary ext2 2893 14592:
Error: /dev/sdb: unrecognised disk label

Failure occurred during the following action:
Formatting partition /dev/sdb4 (89.63 GiB) with ext4

System error code was: -3030

/usr/sbin/parted -s --align=optimal "/dev/sdb" unit cyl mkpart primary ext2 2893 14592:
Error: /dev/sdb: unrecognised disk label

Failure occurred during the following action:
Mounting /dev/sdb2 to swap

System error code was: -3030

/usr/sbin/parted -s --align=optimal "/dev/sdb" unit cyl mkpart primary ext2 2893 14592:
Error: /dev/sdb: unrecognised disk label

Failure occurred during the following action:
Mounting /dev/sdb3 to /

System error code was: -3030

/usr/sbin/parted -s --align=optimal "/dev/sdb" unit cyl mkpart primary ext2 2893 14592:
Error: /dev/sdb: unrecognised disk label

Failure occurred during the following action:
Mounting /dev/sdb1 to /boot/efi

System error code was: -3030

/usr/sbin/parted -s --align=optimal "/dev/sdb" unit cyl mkpart primary ext2 2893 14592:
Error: /dev/sdb: unrecognised disk label

Failure occurred during the following action:
Mounting /dev/sdb4 to /home

System error code was: -3030

/usr/sbin/parted -s --align=optimal "/dev/sdb" unit cyl mkpart primary ext2 2893 14592:
Error: /dev/sdb: unrecognised disk label

At this point, no more error messages show up. The installation continues, packages are installed, though I can’t imagine how SUSE knows WHERE to install the packages.

After a while, I get one more error that I am NOT going to type out

http://i.imgur.com/BynZ9uq.jpg
And then it gets to 95% and just hangs on “Install boot manager”

So this is the stangest thing. OpenSUSE installs just fine on my 3TB HDD, but not on the solid state. Even stranger, Windows will install on the SSD without any problems. I know that there are no bad blocks and the drive is brand new. The DVD is not the problem, because I burned the same image to USB and the same thing happened. The distro is not at fault because I have tried this with several distros now all with similar results.

I am at a loss. What did I do wrong?

2

Was this disk ever converted to Windows Dynamic Disks? This is usual symptom because Linux can read dynamic disks configuration but not change.

3

I don’t believe so. The disk was purchased blank, but I did install Windows 10 on it. Unless Win10 does that automatically, I did not set that up.

4

It would not surprise me that Windows defaulted to dynamic disk. Anything to mess with the competition.:stuck_out_tongue:

Wipe the first track clean (fill with 0’s) should allow a format

5

Second copy of LDM descriptor is in the very last disk sector. Primary copy is usually overwritten but IIRC partmap also checks for second one - and it often remains.

6

I have wiped the drive. I ran

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb

just prior to trying to install again and it had no noticeable effect. Unless I misunderstand how dd works, it SHOULD have wiped the entire drive, correct?

7

Yes, it should have wiped out entire disk.
As a workaround - did you try partition disk in advance (boot any live media) and then import existing partitions during installation?

Do you have RAID controller? Is it possible that you are using something like Intel Smart Response Technology where (part of) SSD is effectively used as cache for rotational disk?

8

I tried creating the partitions and filesystems by hand, but OpenSUSE doesn’t appear to have an option to install the system into existing partitions. It insists on creating its own scheme and messing up the partitions I already have. The error always pops up as soon as Yast tries to create or delete a filesystem.
I do not own a RAID controller and I don’t believe my motherboard supports the Intel tool.

Also, I have tried to install a few different distros now.

Debian says:

Failed to create a swap space
The creation of swap space in partition #5 of SCSI5 (0,1,0) (sdb) failed.

and then falls back to partition managing
Kanotix assures me that it can’t read a sector of my hard drive even though badblocks has assured me that there are no bad blocks
**Ubuntu **says:

The attempt to mount a filesystem with type ext4 in SCSI1 (0,1,0), partition #1 (sda) at / failed.
you may resume partitioning from the partitioning menu.

UNLESS I format the filesystems ahead of time. Then it just freezes while “Saving installed packages…”

9

Okay, I think I found out something new, but I’m still having issues. My motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P and it primarily uses UEFI boot modes. I think this means that the SSD needs to be formatted as GPT. That’s not too bad, but I am still having issues.

First I try to create a GPT

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo gdisk /dev/sdb
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.8

Partition table scan:
  MBR: protective
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.

Command (? for help): w

Final checks complete. About to write GPT data. THIS WILL OVERWRITE EXISTING
PARTITIONS!!

Do you want to proceed? (Y/N): y
OK; writing new GUID partition table (GPT) to /dev/sdb.
The operation has completed successfully.

Now see? It says that the GPT was applied successfully. But when I attempt to create my partitions, it says that there is no partition table

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo cgdisk /dev/sdb
Warning! Non-GPT or damaged disk detected! This program will attempt toconvert to GPT form or repair damage to GPT data structures, but may not
succeed. Use gdisk or another disk repair tool if you have a damaged GPT
disk.
Press any key to continue....

And sure enough, parted tells me that the disk is not formatted.

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo parted -l /dev/sdb
*snip*
Error: /dev/sdb: unrecognised disk label

Is it possible that the SSD is just shot? badblocks has not found any errors on the drive and it is less than 6 months old. And I understand that Kingston is one of the more reliable brands.

10

In installer go to expert mode to create and define your own partitions. You do not have to take the defaults.

For EFI install be sure that you boot the installer in EFI mode NOT in legacy. You will know you are in legacy if you see options at the bottom of the first menu. If you boot to EFI mode all the defaults should be right for an EFI install. But you can always modify the defaults if you need or want to.

11

All right, I tried it one last time, this time booting Gparted Live. I was easily able to apply the partition table and set up the partitions (Why this didn’t work under any other live disc is beyond me). I set up the following:
200MB - EFI Boot - FAT32 - /boot/efi
20GB - Root - ext4 - /
6GB - Swap
Everything else - Home - ext4 - /home

Upon booting up the OpenSUSE DVD, I told Yast to ignore ALL formatting operations (since they were set up ahead of time) and set up the mount points to match. The installation went down without issue this time, but when it was finished, attempting to boot into the SSD was unsuccessful. I was told to “reboot and select proper boot device. Or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key”

Even more odd, I booted back into Gparted to take another look at the drive and the root and boot partitions had been changed to Unallocated. the other two were left untouched. Not sure what to make of that. :confused:

12

This is really beginning to sound like a faulty drive or some other hardware issue.

13

I suppose that’s possible. It would certainly make this problem easier to fix. I will check the drive out more thoroughly some time tonight.

14

Is the drive selected in the EFI boot menu?

Did you boot the dvd in EFI mode NOT legacy? if you did at least the efi boot partition should have been properly selected

15

On 2015-05-22 07:36, anthony62490 wrote:

> Upon booting up the OpenSUSE DVD, I told Yast to ignore ALL formatting
> operations (since they were set up ahead of time) and set up the mount
> points to match. The installation went down without issue this time, but
> when it was finished, attempting to boot into the SSD was unsuccessful.
> I was told to “reboot and select proper boot device. Or insert boot
> media in selected boot device and press a key”
>
> Even more odd, I booted back into Gparted to take another look at the
> drive and the root and boot partitions had been changed to Unallocated.
> the other two were left untouched. Not sure what to make of that. :confused:

Odd indeed.

Run the SMART tests on the disk (use smartctl).

Try changing the SATA cable, even the port.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)