As the title states, I am switching over to openSUSE from Kubuntu and am having some trouble during the installation.
I have been using Linux for the past 10yrs or so, albeit of the *buntu kind, so I am pretty familiar with how to set things up.
My original drive configuration was a 32GB SSD for / and two platter drives for /home and /home/user/storage. I have since changed to two 60GB SSD and will set them up in RAID 0 or 1, have not decided yet. Either way, when selecting ‘RAID’ at the bottom of the YaST installer, I get a pop-up message saying “ERROR. There are not enough suitable unused devices to create a RAID’. This is being generated because one of the SSD’s has two temporary partitions on it:
When I try to delete / move either of the ‘Extended’ or ‘Linux Swap’ partitions, it says “Device /dev/sdb2 cannot be removed because this would indirectly change device /dev/sdb5, which contains data needed to perform the installation.”
Is there any way to force the installer to not use the SSD as swap… or have it put the swap on one of the platter drives? This seems like a bit of a pain as I would think that that 7.5GB is unrecoverable once the installation is completed… at the very least, not without having to re-size the partitions? Would it be better if I just ran the installer instead of booting into the Live CD? I had chosen to run the Live CD as in order to setup the NFS shares during the installation, I needed to turn on rpcbind and nfs through the terminal, as they are not started automatically for the installer or the Live CD.
Another option would be to setup RAID at the hardware level through my motherboard, but I would think that this would still cause the temp partitions to be created?
Thoughts?
PS, I have screen shots, but am unable to post them.
I roughly remember, that during the early stages of installation, I was told by the installer of previous
versions of openSUSE, that it found a Linux SWAP partition, and asked me if it should use it
(to speed things up).
In your case - and if you were asked this question as well - the answer would clearly be no.
That would be fine, but the installer did not ask me if it could use the swap partition that I already have on another drive. It went ahead and created the Extended partition as well as the swap (bolded) as I indicated above.
If the installer would use the existing swap, then all would be well with the world!
What about using another live system like gparted to completely wipe the disks before installation -
BUT if - and ONLY if - you have made a complete backup of the data on your drives before,
because it will be wiped afterwards.
Perhaps that could as well work from an openSUSE live CD,
which afterwards may serve as a rescue system in times of trouble
The SSD’s are brand new, just took them out of the package. The two platter drives have data on them, and as such, I don’t want to wipe them. I was going to simply re-mount them as indicated above, so that all the data would be accessible through the new install.
But if the SSDs can be wiped - or the prtitions on them deleted - whithout any loss of data of you,
then download the gpared live CD or some openSUSE live CD and delete them.
If the partitioner should warn you and you have no data to loose on the SSDs, just go on.
But be sure that you modify the right drive.
What should you loose?
The file system on a CD can’t be damaged!
Good luck
Mike
(edit: ‘But be sure that you modify the right drive.’)
On 2012-11-28 22:46, bluedalek wrote:
> That would be fine, but the installer did not ask me if it could use
> the swap partition that I already have on another drive. It went ahead
> and created the Extended partition as well as the swap (bolded) as I
> indicated above.
> If the installer would use the existing swap, then all would be well
> with the world!
Hold on.
You say that the installer is creating an extended partition and a swap,
without asking you?
Impossible, I do not believe you.
What are you really installing, from where exactly did you download it?
On the other hand, you still have not posted “fdisk -l” inside code tags
as requested.
Maybe the OP thought the proposed scheme was a picture of the disk. I agree that the nothing should touch the hard drive until you accept the the scheme at any point before you can change the scheme and it maybe that if you remove swap from the scheme there may be complaints. Hard to tell with the lack of information.
I am not even sure the OP told sopmewhere which openSUSE version he tries to install. OR did I miss it somewhere on the melee?
Also, while creating partitions and ven creating file system on them prior to installation is quite possible, the installer then cn come to all sorts of conclusions l;ike: there is no more space left on the disk. This can all be overcome by goimng into expert mode )opr how it is called) during installation. Same btw for any pro propoasl made by the installer. You can completely ignore it and make you owm setup using the partitioner part of the installer.
So what is the real problem? And yes, a trustworthy (made by a computer OS, not from a human being) partition list is still lacking.
On 2012-11-29 04:06, gogalthorp wrote:
>
> Maybe the OP thought the proposed scheme was a picture of the disk. I
> agree that the nothing should touch the hard drive until you accept the
> the scheme at any point before you can change the scheme and it maybe
> that if you remove swap from the scheme there may be complaints. Hard to
> tell with the lack of information.
Yes, it could be that he confuses the proposal with the actual system.
On the other hand, it is also possible that the system automatically
uses what swap spaces it finds, but then again, you can use swapoff in a
terminal.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)
No, I understood bluedalek](https://forums.opensuse.org/members/bluedalek.html) in that way,
that the installer used the swap partition already existing
on one of the two identical SSDs he/she has
(if the swap already exists, none has to be created!).
I myself experienced this behaviour of the openSUSE installer
of previous versions of openSUSE (i.e. that the installer used the
Linux swap already existing on one of my hard disks,
c.f. post ).
But with the swap on the HardDisk (or SSD) in use,
of cause difficulties can arise to delete this swap.
That would explain the error message:
'ERROR. There are not enough suitable unused devices to create a RAID’
As far as I understood bluedalek](https://forums.opensuse.org/members/bluedalek.html), he/she wants to wipe the 2nd SSD (/dev/sdb in 1st post)
prior to installation, in order to be able to set up a RAID with the 2 identical SSDs.
openSUSE (i.e. ‘/’ ) shall be installed on these.
On the other hand the contents of the two additional hard disks (/dev/sdc, /dev/sdd)
shouldn’t be changed.
On 2012-11-29 23:46, ratzi wrote:
>
> Dear Carlos, Hi all,
>
> robin_listas;2507418 Wrote:
>> You say that the installer is creating an extended partition and a swap,
>> without asking you?
>
> No, I understood ‘bluedalek’
> (https://forums.opensuse.org/members/bluedalek.html) in that way,
> that the installer used the swap partition already existing
> on one of the two identical SSDs he/she has
> (if the swap already exists, none has to be created!).
Ah, Ok.
> I myself experienced this behaviour of the openSUSE installer
> of previous versions of openSUSE (i.e. that the installer used the
> Linux swap already existing on one of my hard disks,
> c.f. post ).
True, I know.
> But with the swap on the HardDisk (or SSD) in use,
> of cause difficulties can arise to delete this swap.
>
> That would explain the error message:
Yes.
But as I have told at least two times, swap can be disabled. He has not
commented on that yet.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)
And booting from a live (or installer) CD,
starting a terminal, saying su, swapoff etc. … is readily done.
But what if the starter of the thread used an installer DVD?
Then one doesn’t get a terminal or even desktop to work with.
Besides, is it possible that the behaviour of the DVD installer was changed,
i.e. that it perhaps doesn’t ask anymore before using an existing swap on a hard disk?
Perhaps we should have asked that first:
what kind of installation media are you using … etc.
> But what if the starter of the thread used an installer DVD?
> Then one doesn’t get a terminal or even desktop to work with.
Of course you do, and I said how to reach it:
]> You can switch to one of the virtual terminals and use swapoff to
]> disable it. If there is need for a swap, then create another somewhere
]> else first.
> Besides, is it possible that the behaviour of the DVD installer was
> changed,
> i.e. that it perhaps doesn’t ask anymore before using an existing swap
> on a hard disk?
AFAIK, it doesn’t.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)
IMHO the easiest way to prevent the installer from using an existing swap partition as such during installation, is deleting that partition (or at least change the id from Swap (82) to something else). When I understand correctly that you want to wipe those disk(s) and later create a RAID on them, you could equaly easy remove all partitioning from them.
When you do have not enough memory for the installar to work without Swap (I doubt if that is the case), then create first some swap on another disk (maybe even a temp connected one) or pre-create on tthe disk you want your swap after installation (when that is not on the RAID of course) and the installer will use it during installation and most problaby also include it in it’s proposal for the to be installed system as swap.
I didn’t understand how to do that:
the openSUSE installer from the DVD proceeds and I never had even a bit of an idea
how I could open a console during that process, to e.g. switch swap off, or to do whatever.
