Debian Testing (Sarge), partitioning, not able to partition

[Jesper Mortensen]

Gents & Ladies,

I'm trying to install Debian Testing "Sarge" off a CD, which I downloaded as an image yesterday. The system already has a Debian Woody 3.0r2 installed on it, but I was chocked when I saw that Woody uses a 2.2 kernel. I then decided to get something more appropriate for the current millennium.

The PC is an IBM 330, Intel Celeron 333 MHz, 160 MB RAM, Intel 440 LX chipset (predecessor to the famous 440 BX), 3.5 GB ATA 33 disk (primary, master), ATA CD-ROM (secondary, master), and 3Com 905B 100Mbit network card.

During installation, my Sarge detects my CD nicely, and asks for language and keyboard - all OK. It then tells me it will load & start the partitioning tool - OK. I get a single choice, Manual Partitioning, choose it and hit OK.

It then presents a screen where it tells me that my devices are shown below, and I can chose how to partition them. The choices do however not correspond to devices, the choices are Logical Volume Manager, Guided Partitioning and Partitioning Help. None of these choices get me a FDISK screen, no matter which combination I use, I just get kicked back to the menu, or the installer leaves me in a blank screen (not a full shell).

This problem occurs no matter how the disk is laid out when I start the installer, ie. it occurs both if I have existing EXT2 partitions and if I just have a blank disk.

Help?!? How can I come to install "Sarge"?

[lacek]

I was chocked when I saw that Woody uses a 2.2 kernel.

You can have any kernel for woody, including the 2.4 series, but you can compile your own kernel, of course...

And about your problem: What happens if you press alt+F2, then enter (to get a shell), and start the fdisk utility manually?

[Jesper Mortensen]

Hi Lacek,

Your trick with ALT-F2 would probably work - thanks for helping out. I haven't tried it, since I've fixed this another way. (I installed Woody, and used apt-get dist-upgrade to get Sarge.)

Thanks again.

[drdebian]

I think most of the problems are solved by using the most recent version of the new Debian Installer, which can be found here .

The previous version always locked up during the partitioning process, making a successful install impossible.

The latest version really is a masterpiece! It detects everything and no other distro has such a tidy LVM and RAID setup tool. What else, if it's Debian.