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Cliff

Member

Registered: 2018-06-17

Posts: 5  

Installation attempt does not seem to see partitions

Hi, I am trying to install the ASCII 2 desktop-live from a USB drive to a Lenovo Yoga 3.
I don't understand why my boot options offers me my internal hard drive, and then my USB drive both as a legacy drive and as a UEFI drive.  Even with the bios set to boot legacy first, I can only boot the UEFI.  The legacy option gives 'Missing Operating System'.  I mention this because it may indicate that something I don't understand is the problem.

So after booting the UEFI desktop-live I have to understand how to partition the disk.  I have:
sda1 as 120GB formatted ext4
sda2 as 250MB formatted fat32 with flags esp and boot
sda3 as 250MB formatted fat32
sda4 as 12GB linux swap.

I made the 2 small partitions because the error messages I get seem to relate to both UEFI installation and BIOS installation. So I 'think' I've prepared properly for either?

During installation attempts, this is the sequence of errors/problems/misunderstandings:

1. installer warning
There is no disk with a gpt partition table.
You should exit this script and run gdisk to create one for uefi boot.
There is no EFI partition. You will need to create one or else install the system without a bootloader.
DO NOT FORMAT A PRE-EXISTING EFI PARTITION!!!

I click on Help and find Special Instructions(for Devuan-Live and Refracta isos)
This details UEFI install, BIOS install, 32 bit GRUB with 64 bit system, BIOS install with GPT partition table.

I have not seen a choice in the installer so I am left to assume it must be automatic depending upon the partitions and flags?

2. I click on OK to the installation options screen and get something like the output of a mount command that covers a box that tells me that I need a partition for the installation and if I already have one I can skip this step, which gives me an error

There is no EFI partition. You will need to create one

I select Partitioner rather than Abort

3. This gives me another mount output screen and the option to run gparted or gdisk.
If I run gparted and click on the sda1 then closed gparted it seems it may have registered where the OS needs to go. But the next screen mentions missing EFI partition again.  So I run gparted again and click on sda2 then close gparted.
I then get:
- a Select EFI partition screen with no partitions listed, and
- a Format EFI screen offering to create a fat32 system on the partition, but it doesn't mention which partition.

I've been through this quite a few times since last night and the only thing I've been able to do is install Devuan with no boot loader and then not be able to boot it.

I am hoping a kind user reading this can see where I'm wrong or what I'm misunderstanding and put me right because I've been looking for a good systemd-free alternative for quite a while.  This one works very well from the desktop-live pen and I want to make it my standard (I have 3 machines and support a couple of older people as well).

Thanks for any advice at all,

Cliff

Dutch_Master

Member

Registered: 2018-05-31

Posts: 288  

Re: Installation attempt does not seem to see partitions

Well, first things first: if you have any data on that machine worth keeping, copy it over to a safe storage device. When done, it allows you to start afresh.

Rather then writing a detailed guide, I'll refer you to the install guide from Funtoo. I've run Funtoo in the (recent) past and found their install guide very helpful indeed. The part you need is here: click! Funtoo uses the SysrescueCD tools to give you a working live system. It's perfectly OK to use it preparing your hard-drive. Make sure you reboot the machine for changes to the partition table to take effect.

Once done setting up the disk as you've chosen, re-run the installer from the live-disk (or USB drive in your case) to see if it detects the partitions you've made.

HTH!

Cliff

Member

Registered: 2018-06-17

Posts: 5  

Re: Installation attempt does not seem to see partitions

Thank you very much. I'm downloading the systemrescuecd.iso as I read the article.
I'll post the results later.

Cliff

fsmithred

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 2,501  

Re: Installation attempt does not seem to see partitions

The installer in the live isos does not do any automatic partitioning. After you close gparted, you should get questions about where to put the OS, and if you made separate partitions for /home or /boot, you get to select those, too.

Some lenovos won't let you use legacy boot. I don't know the details on that.

If you're booting in uefi mode, you will need to re-partition your drive.
In gparted, first go to the Device menu and write a new gpt partition table. You must have left it set for msdos.

At minimum, you will need a partition for the OS and an efi partition (with esp and boot flags). The swap partition is optional - the installer will create a swapfile if there's no swap partition.

If you want to use a gpt-partitioned disk with legacy boot, you need to create a special partition for that. It must be >1MB and unformatted. (It's at the bottom of the list of filesystem types in gparted). And it must have the bios_grub flag.

Cliff

Member

Registered: 2018-06-17

Posts: 5  

Re: Installation attempt does not seem to see partitions

SOLVED
Thank you both. I got there with a combination of approaches.
I started with the systemrescuecd and created the 3 partitions first for BIOS/MBR method and then tried the install. I was still told I didn't have a GPT disk.  So I ran gparted and took View->Device information.  This told me that the disk was msdos regardless of whether there were partitions or not.
Next I used gdisk to create the 3 partitions which made the disk into a gpt rather than msdos.  Then I booted devuan live once more and looked at the gparted which said all the partitions had errors and taking the option Partition->Check would fix it. I did this for the sda1 boot partition but the option was not offered for the other 2.  So I decided that since the disk was now gpt and the filesystems were available in gparted I could delete and re-create them which I did.
This time when I ran the install it worked and ran through without problems.

Finally I rebooted and got just a '-' in row 1 column 1. So I went into the bios and left legacy support selected but changed the order to uefi first. This worked and I now have this splendid system working.  By mid week I'll have replaced the OS on the Thinkpad I'm typing on which is currently ubuntu 16:04 lts. Next weekend the first of the people I support will be moved to this also.

Thank you very much.

Cliff

P.S. I forgot to mention that I could find no way to convert the disk from msdos to gpt. The bundled version is 0.25.0

fsmithred

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 2,501  

Re: Installation attempt does not seem to see partitions

Glad you got it working. For future reference -

In gparted, go to Device --> Create partition table
and then where it says 'mdos' is a drop-down menu with partition table types.

Cliff

Member

Registered: 2018-06-17

Posts: 5  

Re: Installation attempt does not seem to see partitions

Thank you. I missed that completely. I'll be much more comfortable with the next build on Tuesday evening.

Cliff