Zenmini - need to reboot for partition table mods...what?

[Red Leader]

So I'm stuck trying to download ZenMini on my laptop.  Won't let me install.  Here is what it says right after I select to erase and use entire disk:

"You need to reboot for the partition table modifications to take place"

I don't get it at all.  I'm on a live cd - rebooting does nothing.  I tried another forum members suggestion to log out and log back in.  Does nothing.

Why put this message if you can't even do anything about it?

Any work-arounds?

[Red Leader]

Okay,

so i was able to install via using existing partitions.  I put the '/' folder at 12 GB, and the '/home' folder at 77 GB (100GB hard drive)...I assume the rest is used for swap or something else?  In any case, does that partitioning sound whacked?  Hopefully it will work okay.  I'm going for a lean, mean OS so it won't need a lot of room for junk.

Thanks for any input!


Also, I'm still curious as to why the heck I couldn't just erase and use the whole hard drive.  What gives?

[MBantz]

Yes, I'm also curious on why the need to reboot - only explanation I could guess on would be that the devices need to be recognized at boot. Think we need Old Polack to answer this one :-)

To answer your question, after the partitioning is made to your preferences - reboot and then choose 'Use existing partitions'.

As a note, I saw a discrepancy when I planned for ext3, but got ext2 at one point. When selecting ext3 and formatting the partition all was well.

I can only recommend you to double check that you have ext3 partitions (if you plan to use this filesystem),

cheers,
MBantz

[Old-Polack]

Yes, I'm also curious on why the need to reboot - only explanation I could guess on would be that the devices need to be recognized at boot. Think we need Old Polack to answer this one :-)

To answer your question, after the partitioning is made to your preferences - reboot and then choose 'Use existing partitions'.

As a note, I saw a discrepancy when I planned for ext3, but got ext2 at one point. When selecting ext3 and formatting the partition all was well.

I can only recommend you to double check that you have ext3 partitions (if you plan to use this filesystem),

cheers,
MBantz

When you create a new partition table the kernel is still using the old one that exists in memory. Until that clears, you can't format, or use, the newly created partitions. If you reboot, the partition table is read, during the boot process, directly from the hard drive, and that is what gets placed into memory and used during that session. There is a way to beat this, which is to run partprobe, immediately after creating the new partitions, which will inform the kernel that changes have been made and what they are, after which one can directly access the new partitions without a reboot, format them, and install. Partprobe is a command line tool, executed by the command;

# partprobe           <Enter>

or

# partprobe /dev/<whatever>           <Enter>

The second is for use when multiple hard drives exist. If one does not specify a drive, the command will still work, but the drives that had no changes made will report errors, as there will be no changes, and changes are what is being looked for.

The trick here is that you have to install parted in order to get partprobe, which is one of parted's tools. One can install parted to the liveCD. It will only be there for that session, but that's long enough. If everyone asks nicely, maybe parted could be included on the liveCD in a future release. In the mean time, one could install it before making a remaster... 

[MBantz]

Thanks for the explanation Old-Polack,

very useful information and another stone turned for me :-)

[Red Leader]

OldPolack thanks so much for that very useful information.  I hope that other who run into the same thing see your response!

[pags]

So I'm stuck trying to download ZenMini on my laptop.  Won't let me install.  Here is what it says right after I select to erase and use entire disk:

"You need to reboot for the partition table modifications to take place"

I don't get it at all.  I'm on a live cd - rebooting does nothing.  I tried another forum members suggestion to log out and log back in.  Does nothing.

Why put this message if you can't even do anything about it?

Any work-arounds?

Another point to keep in mind...I take it this was a pre-existing linux install (since the partitioning scheme seems appropriate).
I haven't tried ZENmini on existing hardware, yet, but if it enables any valid SWAP partitions at boot, that will cause fdisk to be unable to properly re-read the partition table, precipitating the request to reboot (so that any open partitions can be closed, and the table re-read upon the new boot).

Try type

Code:

free

and see if the results include swap space.  You could also use

Code:

swapon -s

to see the status of any swap partitions.