From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0 Description of problem: On my brand new LG LT20 Tablet/Laptop, trying to install Fedora Core 3 from DVD burned from ISO, when pressing next on the step where I am asked if I want automatic or manual partitioning (any choice will do) I get an error saying it was not able to read the partition table and asks me if I want to reset it (loosing all information on it). Pressing NO gives me an error dialog saying Disk Drive not found and afterwards exits and reboots. Going in to rescue system, I can fdisk /dev/hda and see the partition list perfect. I already have Windows XP Tablet, a linux swap partition and a reiserFS partition with Suse 9.0 on it. What I wanted to do was use fedora instead of Suse. This laptop has a hidden partition with the windows rescue instalation system on it, but it is not visible to fdisk, so I guess the BIOS is hiding it. But that should have no impact, at least fdisk doesn't complain and I do have Suse installed on it. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Try to install... 2. 3. Additional info:
What does parted show on the disk (as opposed to fdisk)?
Well, parted complains 'Can't have partition outside of disk!' It must be referencing the BIOS hidden recovery partition, which I thought was completly masked out, but seem to have been proven wrong.
Can you switch to the shell on tty2, run dmesg | more, and see if the kernel is recognizing the hidden recovery partition at all? Sometimes the hidden partition is very well hidden from the system, and sometimes the kernel is still able to see that it's there.
No, it isn't. On top of dmesg there's the kernel stating the existing partition table on hda, and has hda1, hda2 and hda3 (that NTFS, linux swap, and linux, the linuxes being from a previous SuSE instalation). That's the only place the kernel speaks about partitions. So the hidden partition stays hidden... Also the disk size as stated by fdisk is 57.6 GB, and this is a 60 GB disk, so the BIOS is masking the information directly AFAIK. There's something telling parted about the hidden partition, but it then appears to be outside the disk geometry, from the info that the BIOS supplies. Or at least that's my opinion :)
parted-1.6.24 has some fixes regarding hidden partitions, but there still might be a kernel problem at work here as well. Is it possible for you to somehow test with this newer parted package and see if it is resolved?
Well, parted 1.6.24 actually shows me the (correct?) partition table. The only quirk I find is the fact the first partition starts at 32kB: (parted) print Disk geometry for /dev/hda: 0kB - 60GB Disk label type: msdos Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 1 32kB 42GB 42GB primary ntfs boot 2 42GB 42GB 58MB primary ext2 3 42GB 43GB 979MB primary linux-swap 4 43GB 60GB 17GB primary reiserfs I now have gentoo installed and as such I am not going to get fedora in any more. Next time I format the drive I'll try it out, but I'm pretty sure now I would be able to install fedora as parted no longer raises an exception on scanning the partition table. I'm not changing this bug status as you may want me to do any other test. Otherwise, feel free to close it. Thanks a lot for the support.
Closing as CANTFIX as machine is no longer available for testing. Also, I'm changing the title slightly so it's easier to search for in the future. Feel free to reopen this bug if you experience the problem again in the future.