Can't Partition Samsung 850 EVO SSD for Linux Dual-Boot

The subject is an old Toshiba M105 Satellite-1.66 GHz Centrino dual-core - originally loaded with Win XP, so I do not have to worry about EFI. (SATA drive interface; AHCI bios setting.) I installed Linux Mint 17.3 32-bit without any issues, and then tried to install Tumbleweed 32-bit. The Tumbleweed partition tool correctly displayed my Mint partitions, and there is about half of the Samsung 850 EVO’s 120 GB capacity ot yet used. The actual SSD capacity is shown as 111 GB. However the “create new partition” dialog shows only 7.84 MB (no typo: MB) available free space, which is what Mint’s sysinfo shows is the size of one cylinder. I then tried installing OS 13.1 32-bit and got the same results

I have installed dual-boot Linux setups with conventional hard discs before without any difficulty. Is there something peculiar about the Samsung 850 EVO?

Hi
Did you create an extended partition for the linux installs? Perhaps show the output from;


fdisk -l /dev/sda

As requested:


Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders, total 234441648 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000dd5c5

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048     9764863     4881408   83  Linux
/dev/sda2         9764864    68358143    29296640   83  Linux
/dev/sda3        68358144   117186559    24414208   83  Linux
/dev/sda4       117188606   121092095     1951745    5  Extended
/dev/sda5       117188608   121092095     1951744   82  Linux swap / Solaris

You can only have 4 primary partitions which one can be extended. You have your 4 but the extended does not take up the rest of the drive and is completely filled. You can not have any more partition outside the extended. The extended need to be bigger

My swap is in an extended partition. The way Mint labels things is not quite how OS does it. Partition 4 is labeled as extended, in which swap - sda5 - is the first extended partition in actual use.

As I mentioned, I have installed this way without issue on a conventional hard drive. I wanted Tumbleweed installed second in order to use its bootloader to display both Linuces on the computer.

You are confused.

sda4 is the extended partition. The extended partition is a primary partition with a special purpose: to contain logical partitions.

sda5 sits inside the extended partition and such a partitiion is called a “logical partition”.

Now, with this knowledge, please reread gogalthorpe’s advice.

There is also information here: https://en.opensuse.org/SDB%3ABasics_of_partitions,_filesystems,_mount_points

Regardless of my mislabeling my sda5 swap partition “extended” vice logical, I just installed another iteration of Mint 17.3, using its partition tool to create sda6 (boot), sda7 (/) and sda8 (home) without any difficulty. I should now be able to install OS by reformatting these partitions.

That’s one way of solving your problem. With the opensuse installer, I think you could have resized “/dev/sda4” (to the max possible). After that, there would have been space to add additional partitions.

Hi
Just make sure on the final page before starting the install that the openSUSE bootloader installs into the extended partition, then it should pick up the mint install and add a chainloader entry for your Mint install.

I always install the bootloader in / or /boot.

Here is the fdisk -l output of my system now:


Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders, total 234441648 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000dd5c5

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048     9764863     4881408   83  Linux
/dev/sda2         9764864    68358143    29296640   83  Linux
/dev/sda3        68358144   117186559    24414208   83  Linux
/dev/sda4       117188606   222654463    52732929    5  Extended
/dev/sda5       117188608   121092095     1951744   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6       121094144   124997631     1951744   83  Linux
/dev/sda7       124999680   173826047    24413184   83  Linux
/dev/sda8       173828096   222654463    24413184   83  Linux

So, my question remains: if Linux Mint 17.3 (32-bit) can create the additional logical partitions in the previously created extended partition, why can’t Tumbleweed?

Hi
Just check it’s either your sda5 or sda6 (assuming that’s where you want it to go).

I probably could have using the expert partitioner and the hit rescan drive(s) else it will just use what it has free. Else it may be a bug with the Tumbleweed installer (that happens… since it’s bleeding edge development etc).

TW has no issues doing this right. Unless you create a small extended partition. It will never contain more than the logical partitions inside it. See the start- / end numbers.

I tried every possible partition method, other than letting the new installation overwrite the existing Mint partitions. I had the same problem with OS 13.1, so it seems to be something in the way YAST’s partition tool works. With Mint, I just selected the unused space and created the logical partitions I wanted.

I’ll try installing OS 13.1 over the second Mint install. I decided I need an OS with dial-up capability as a backup. OS dropped dialup support - qinternet - with 13.2. I have managed to connect with wvdial in Leap and Tumbleweed, but only as root. (There was a previous discussion of this, so no need to go there again. BTW since my other laptop with OS 13.1 has no serial port, I connected my old USR dialup modem with a USB to serial port cable. OS 13.1’s YAST modem module found the dialup modem and configured it.)

Bingo! I see now what happened. Mint automatically resized the extended partition to accommodate the additional logical partitions.