partition problem during installation

[dtam5874]

Trying to install Fedora 8 on a 320GB hard Maxtor ATA hard drive. There is 65GB of free unpartitioned space available, the rest is already used by WinXP.

When I select the option "Use free space on selected drives and create default layout", the get the following 2 messages:

1) Error Partitioning
Could not allocate requested partitions: Partitioning failed: Unsatisfied partition request ...
2) Automatic Partitioning Errors: The following errors occured with your partitioning: You have not defined a root partition (/), which is required for installation of Fedora to continue
This can happen if there is not enough free space on your hard drive(s) for installation.

So then I tried the option "Create Custom Layout". It shows free space of 65248MB. I was able to create a "/" partition of 10GB. Then I tried to create a 1GB swap partition, but get the an error message- Could not allocate requested partitions: Partitioning failed: Not enough space left to create partition for None. But it shows that there is still 55246MB of free space.

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks.

[Dies]

http://www.partedmagic.com/

Quick download, burn to CD then boot from it and create your layout, now when you go to install just choose custom then point fedora to your partitions.

Unless you had your heart set on using LVM that is.

[bmvbab]

Originally Posted by dtam5874

Trying to install Fedora 8 on a 320GB hard Maxtor ATA hard drive. So then I tried the option "Create Custom Layout". It shows free space of 65248MB. I was able to create a "/" partition of 10GB. Then I tried to create a 1GB swap partition, but get the an error message- Could not allocate requested partitions: Partitioning failed: Not enough space left to create partition for None. But it shows that there is still 55246MB of free space.

If you dont make sure that the "Grow to maximum", it would have increased the size to maximum available and thats probably why u are not getting enough free space for further partitions.

Make sure u uncheck "Grow to max size" or make sure "Fixed size" is checked and u should be fine

[markkuk]

How many partitions are there on the disk? Can you post the current partition layout e.g a screen capture of the Windows disk manager?

[dtam5874]

Fixed size is checked. After the 1st partition is created, it shows that I still have lot of free space left. For some reason, I can't create a 2nd partition, no matter how much free space is left. I created partitions before during Red Hat Linux installs, and never had this problem.

Attached are screenshots of Windows Disk Management and the partition page during linux installation.

[Dies]

Strange partitioning scheme you have there, and it seems you've already wasted your extended partition by sandwiching it between two primaries. You may want to rethink this layout.

[dtam5874]

It's working now. I was encountering the 4 max. partition limit earlier I believe.

I redid the partition in WinXP as Dies suggested.

one 40 GB primary partition
rest of hard drive - one extended partition

within the extended partition, i have 2 100GB logical WinXP drives, with ~60GB left for linux

With this partition setup, I was able create in linux installation 4 partitions /boot, /home, /, and swap.

thanks.