Installer crashes when formatting partitions... [Solved]

[greendave8]

I am trying and failing to install 5.5 kde. Every time it gets to setting up the partitions, it just hangs. I have tried gparted to format the entire disk as ext4, and have tried using existing partitions before that. I have tried custom settings also, and it still fails during the format of either root or home partitions.....

This is the first Sabayon I have had problems installing....AAAAAAArrrgggghhh!

Any ideas would be appreciated...

gd8

[Fitzcarraldo]

Partition, and format the partitions, using GParted on a LiveCD/DVD beforehand, and then boot the SL LiveDVD and run the installer. If you have a copy of the SL GNOME LiveDVD then boot that and run GParted from that. If not, SystemRescueCd or any other LiveCD with GParted would do.

[speedyx]

I suggest to use patitionmanager (aka kde partition editor) before to launch the installer from the live session.

I don't want to flame the discussion but a 5.6 live release with fixed bugs was necessary after the 5.5.
I wait for the 6.

[greendave8]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the advice, I've already parted and formatted with no success, I now think there is a hardware fault, as no other o/s discs will install either???

Unusual and co-incidental, but I wasted all of yesterday trying "everything". I think the motherboard maybe faulty.....

Thanks again for the input....

gd8

[genfool]

If this machine is to be sabayon only, not a dual boot. And you have no info to save on it

With the live disk, open a terminal and su to root. Is no passwd so just hit enter for blank password.
I am only assuming this is a single hard drive, and is sda ... if not you need to adjust the drive to your needs.
The goal is to simply remove the partitions, leave free space. Again, if you dual boot with windows or another os ...
You may not want to try this, can be easy to delete the wrong partition.
I have seen the live disk on many occasions will mount partitions while booting, often it is swap.
A mounted partition causes an instant fail for the installer. No partitions, nothing can be mounted.

open terminal, su and hit enter twice
fdisk /dev/sda
p to print / show current partitions
d to delete partition will ask for partition # to del, tell it.
repeat until you have removed all partitions
w to write and save the new partition layout
reboot and start the installer, just use the installer to create the new partitions.
In most cases, do not need to reboot, can just start the installer. (just in case)
use the installer to create the new partitions.

If you do have a windows partition, when you hit p for print, you can tell what partition it is by the ntfs file system, leave it alone.
If you dual boot with another distro, or have a home partition, you need to know which partition they are.
If this is the case, I would only suggest to remove swap. Since it is often the culprit. You can re create it in the installer.

I personally have had poor success with gparted, stopped using it a long time ago.
The method above only takes a min, has helped me many others.

If this does not help you, as soon as the installer fails. Open a terminal as root
dmesg
open firefox or whatever browser you have, go to pastebin .com and paste the long mesg, submit it, the url in the address bar will change, come back here and give us the address.
if you scroll to the end of the dmesg, the very last thing that happened is the installer crashing, usually will give a reason for it. sometimes the actual error occurred earlier, so you need to start going backwards till you find the error.
Sometimes it might not give a clue.
This is the method that I use to see the swap mounted error so many times.
If it is hardware, should also be able to see it there.
Enjoy.

[Fitzcarraldo]

I suggest to use patitionmanager (aka kde partition editor) before to launch the installer from the live session.

I find that GParted, which has a long history (first release was in 2004), is more reliable that the more-recent KDE Partition Editor (which was first released with KDE 4.1 in 2008). I've experienced several times that KDE Partition Editor appears to partition correctly but I have not been able to install onto those partitions, and had to resort to using GParted. I've also experienced a HDD which KDE Partition Editor could not partition at all and crashed, and, again, I had to resort to using GParted. I'm a KDE user myself, so would prefer to use a native KDE application, but in this case GParted is a much better tool. Hopefully, in a few years KDE Partition Editor will have reached the same level as GParted.

I personally have had poor success with gparted, stopped using it a long time ago.

That's strange, as it has never failed me on a variety of new and legacy machines. What do you experience, precisely? Have you tried a recent version? I've been using it for several years and it has been continuously upgraded. Perhaps you would have more success with the more recent versions.

[genfool]

The last version I tried, just a few months ago ... it simply crashed in the middle of the partitioning.
It did not complete, or cause any errors.... it is never good to have a partitioning app crash in the middle of its job.
Back with 5.4, although gparted never crashed, the sabayon (fedora) installer, still did not like the new partition scheme, fdisk was the only way I could get past the installer crashing.
The little research I have done, appears this never happens on fedora, is a bug in the sabayon code that only affects a few people, a few machines.
But enough that on irc #sabayon I see it often.

I think that using fdisk a command line tool to create and delete do partition work etc..... can be a little overwhelming for some.
A:, it has never crashed on me
B:, it only does exactly what I tell it to do
c:, it is pretty easy to use
d:. has a great help section
And if we are simply doing a sabayon install single boot, use the whole drive. My above instructions can be completed with the tools provided on sabayon, and done in a min. often one can continue on with the installer without rebooting.

I am not a fanboi command line junkie, but fdisk is certainly a tool that I prefer to use.
If one is going to use gparted to create the partitions, I would still advise to use gparted to simply delete them in this case.
Use the installer to create the new partitions.

In the case above, op already tried gparted, got poor results. I will admit that gparted will work for 90% of users with no issues.
For the rest, just fdisk and move on.

[greendave8]

Firstly I'd like to thank the guys for trying to help me with the crashing installer problems.
It turned out to be a bad motherboard, as I slowly realised....

I now have 64bit Sabayon installed and running well, just need some fine tuning to do. (nvidia driver isn't running 3d)

Thanks to all again, this is a great community and a great distro....

gd8