I’ve tried to install opensuse on my intel 64bit pc with sata hdd which already has partitions, but at the partition section of the installation my suse suggests reformating my harddisk instead of recognizing the existing partitions. Simply it shows an empty list of partitions even after reloading the partition table.
I’ve tried it with different versions (11.0 x86-64, 10.3 64 and 10.2 32bit) but all of them had the same problem.
Is it a 64-bit or intel problem or the sata hdd is the reason or something else?
If you don’t need to keep any data on the disk, you can just let the installer set the default partition layout. Are you trying to keep a partition with data on it?
I am having the exact same problem. I have 2 74G WD Raptor SATA disks. One has Linux and the other has Windows. The Linux disk is in 3 separate partitions; root, swap, and home. I want to keep the home partition. The installer doesn’t see any of the partitions on any of the disks. It actually lists 3 disk devices when I go into the “edit partitioning” screen; sda, sdb, and md0. I am not sure where it is getting the md0 from but it sees the sda and sdb as the correct physical disks. This seems like a major problem as I have never had this issue with any of the other major distro’s I have tried. If there is any other information I can get to help diagnose this problem, I’d be happy to gather it.
Boot from the install media (cd or dvd). when you get to the screen that is titled “Prepair HardDisk Step 1” (top left on the screen) look for the selection “Custom Partitioning (expert users)”;
Select it. Here you can tell it what to do with your existing partitions.
Had same issues in the past.Tried everthing.
Finally,waht was wrong was that i had to change the sata/IDE cables with some new ones.
The old ones were working perfectly under winxp.Give it a try,u never know…
Neophyte42 wrote:
> Are the old partitions Rieserfs? If so you may have to either kill the
> partitions or wait and hope that OpenSUSE 11.1 has RieserFS support.
>
> Just for kicks and giggles, does OpenSUSE 10.x install see the
> partitions? This would help determine if this is an 11.0 specific
> issue.
For the record, openSUSE 11.0 has ReiserFS support. In the original release, the
2.6.25 kernel (Note - that IS NOT openSUSE SPECIFIC.) had at least two bugs that
caused system hangs in certain circumstances. These have been fixed in
2.6.26.11, which is the latest kernel on the update site.
Whatever problems you are having are probably not a ReiserFS problem.
Reiserfs is still a valid (and good choice) & as lwfinger already states the issues that where in the kernel with the 11.0 release have been fixed.
Reiserfs v4 is not really going places at the moment (and maybe never will) but reiser v3 is still being maintained and performs well.
@lostlont : it’s strange that the setup does see your drive but not the current layout.
You could check to see what the kernel is seeing by dripping to a console (using <ALT><CTRL><F1> 0r <F2>). In the console enter ’ fdisk -l ’ to list the disks and their layouts. You can get back to the GUI by hitting <ALT><CTRL><F7>…
Is there anything specific about your current setup, like are you using a bootmanager or other? Maybe this is giving the false reflection…?
I don’t use ReiserFS. I have two clear ext3 parts and a clear 1gb ext3 swap (they are unformatted), and two ntfs part (and another unformatted part).
And I can’t get a console until I successfully install the linux so I can’t check what the kernel sees. Another distro could see all the existing partitions (so it’s not a kernel problem) but I want to stay with suse.
I have checked the console: fdisk can see the partitions perfectly. Just the installer not…
And now I’ve tried to install from text mode and unload the unused modules and it didn’t work, so the fdisk is ok but the whole installer fails…
It could be worth a shot to open a new bug report if the above does not fix it. Could be something kernel related as you state other distros and older openSUSE version see your partition correctly.