The partitions data region doesnt occupy....

[DIxer]

Hello again,
I keep getting these two messages while attempting to install FC4 from a DVD:
"The partitions data region doesnt occupy the entire partition" and "Attempt to Read Sectors 16 - 18 outside of partition /dev/hda".
The installer doesnt recognise my External Firewire Harddrive either because when I eventually get to the partition screen only the option to partition my internal drive is present.
I've partitioned the ext. to Apple Journaled, Unix and Free Space (The options provided by Disk Utility in the hope that maybe the installer would recognise one of these but no joy.
Has anybody encountered this problem before? Can anybody advise a method of formatting to a system that Anaconda might recognise?
I'm thinkiing I should maybe just try a different distro, Ubuntu or something?
Any advise will be appreciated,
Thanks,
Dixer.

[vincen]

I have exactly same problem here with a Powerbook 17" 1Ghz, and when I go in Terminal of FC4 install, fdisk sees none partition on drive ! Don't know what to do :'(

Vince

[brandor]

I'm getting the same problem as the OP. Not sure what's going on or what to do.

[vincen]

Originally Posted by brandor

I'm getting the same problem as the OP. Not sure what's going on or what to do.

Switch to YellowDogLinux, it works great on my Powerbook 17". There is a workaround for that problem but it's not really simple !!

Vincèn

[daneel971]

Maybe you can get some hint from this link - I'm not sure if this can be usuful, but give it a try.

http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/suppor...dmachine.shtml

[brandor]

Switch to YellowDogLinux, it works great on my Powerbook 17". There is a workaround for that problem but it's not really simple !!

I don't want YDL.

[websavages]

How I solved this was to wipe the disk clean with the apple disk utility and then install fedora core 4 test 3 and then upgrade to fedora core 4

Cheers ws

[DIxer]

Thanks for all the responses.
I'm thinking the FC4T3 to FC4 upgrade is probably the way I'm gonna go but I cant get access to the images for a few weekes yet but I'll be sure to report back if I get any success.
Thanks again,
Nick.

[ssrjdg]

I had the same problem but following these instructions worked in my case:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla....cgi?id=159047

The last post holds the key. There appears to be a bug where the free partitions you use for FC4 must be named 'Extra'.
Good luck.

[nokollonzo]

I faced recently the problem, and solved it without passing through FC3test, MacOSX or switching to YDL
The problem is that FC4 doesn't have a good DiskDruid porting tp ppc architecture and nor the CD1, nor the DVD version contain the only one good tool to do the partitioning job. The fdisk you find there is for x86 style partitioning and does not create the 2 partitions needed by the Mac BIOS (called Open Boot) to work properly.
To solve the problem you can use the CD1 of another distribution like Debian, Slackintosh (as I did) or YDL and use the tool called mac-fdisk, partition your HD makeing a "new empty partiton table" and a "Apple boot partition" first, adding the partitions you want afterwards . Reboot with the Fedora DVD and install without repartitioning, but selecting the mountpoints only.
YDL is not a good choice because packets are a little bit older than the one Fedora provides and some installing guides for YDL+ppc suggest the user to install YDL and some Fedora rpms afterwards (like Thunderbird and Firefox or OpenOffice) Notice that YDL includes OpenOffice 1.2 while Fedora-ppc provides 2.0 beta! Why should a FCL user switch to YDL??
I wrote a pretty complete and deep guide to install FC4 on an iBook (suitable for any other new world Mac); unfortunately only in Italian at present (Im from Turin, 2006 Winter Olympics City) Check the link because an English version is coming nsoon!
My guide is at: http://www.labinf.polito.it/nepote/l..._ibook_g4.html
Hope be usefull

Noko

[sohailm01]

I ran into this same exact problem earlier today. Here's how I fixed it.

I booted my powerbook using an Ubuntu LiveCD (Breezy Badger 5.10 preview).

When the system was up, I pulled up a Terminal (sorry, Mac terminology there) and started up the fdisk tool (fdisk /dev/hda)

Ideleted every partition, told fdisk to "Reinitialize the Partition Map." I think it's the 'i' command in fdisk, but you can double check that by hitting '?' for a list of commands.

I wrote the changes to the partition map ('w' command in fdisk), rebooted from the FC4 PPC DVD and everything worked fine.

[brandor]

I'm not familiar with the "Reinitialize the Partition Map." option. I know you said you deleted the partition, but does doing this lose data on the drive?

Thanks!

[Zakarth]

I wasn't doing a dual-boot situation, I wanted to wipe out OS X and everything in one fell swoop so I didn't have any problem doing this. I fixed the problem thats being mentioned here by switching to another console during the GUI install (fn+ctrl+alt + f1) and then doing a

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=1024k count=5

Once I blew out the partition, and did a reboot to do the install again the problem went away.

Remember not to use "Automatic partitioning" and use the Disk druid instead. Make sure you set up a 1 MB apple bootstrap partition at the beginning.

The linux system booted fine after that but the swap label became corrupt in fstab somehow. An fdisk -l didn't show any valid partitions at all (even though linux had no trouble accessing them)-- so I took out the fstab with the corrupt swap label and repointed it to the correct partition and that fixed most of my problems with the hard drive (even though fdisk -l still doesn't show valid partitions, linux doesn't seem to care and I verified that swap and everything is working now so I'm not going to complain).

Hope this helps someone but it probably won't if they are insisting on doing a dual-boot.