prepare partition can't create > 200Gb paritions

[fejes]

I have a USB connected 250Gb hard drive attached to an older IBM computer.

When using the "prepare parition" portion of the installer in manual mode, I tried to create a logical parition at the end of the free space of the hard drive. Although I didn't try to determine the exact threshold, any partition created that was greater than 200,000Mb would fail with the error "can't have the end before the start"

output of uname -a:
Linux ubuntu 2.6.20-12-generic #2 SMP Wed Mar 21 20:55:46 UTC 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

Hard drive is a 250Gb external USB drive, distributed by "SAMTACK". No other identification is currently available from the exterior of the model.

dmesg is full of other errors. I will attach to this post.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Thu Apr 19 12:26:06 2007
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 7.04
Uname: Linux ubuntu 2.6.20-12-generic #2 SMP Wed Mar 21 20:55:46 UTC 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This bug did not have a package associated with it, which is important for ensuring that it gets looked at by the proper developers. You can learn more about finding the right package at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage . I have classified this bug as a bug in ubiquity.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Could you please attach /var/log/syslog and /var/log/partman to this bug, following the directions in http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingUbiquity/AttachingLogs? Thanks in advance.

[Eric Trager (erictrager)]

I can confirm this happens, although in my case it was with manually partitioning a 250 GB disk at install time. I've attached the two logs you want, although you'll see many different attempts at different sizes. Basically if I attempted to make / bigger than 200GB, I got the "can't have the end before the start" failure message.

[Eric Trager (erictrager)]

My syslog.

[fejes (anthony-fejes)]

Sorry - I no longer have access to my logs - I repartitioned with a smaller size, and was eventualy able to complete the install.

Eric's logs will have to do.

[Alatar (alatar-pcartisan)]

I have encountered this problem while partitioning a 500Gb hard drive. I was following the instructions for setting-up MythTV at
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV_Feisty_Backend_Frontend_Desktop

The third primary partition would have been a 360Gb XFS partition, but I received the error "can't have the end before the start". Attempting to place this 360Gb partition at the end of the drive did not work. Creating two XFS partitions at 200GB + remaining space (about 160Gb) worked.

Feisty Fawn 7.04 AMD/Intel 64bit Desktop version
500Gb Western Digital SATA
Asus P5WD2-E Premium MB
LiteOn E-IDE CD-ROM SHM-165H6S

[Michael Satterwhite (michael-weblore)]

I had the same problem installing Feisty with a 400Gb drive. The error occurred as long as the partition was larger than 200Gb. In order to finish the install, I had to specify a partition size of 200Gb.

[Zoltan (zoltans)]

I'm blocked by this issue too. Trying to create a system with 120MB /boot, 20GB /, 2GB swap and 297GB /home on a 320GB HD.
(and then a 500GB HD with only 1 ext3 partition)
Is there some work being done on this bug/issue?

I'm happy to spend time trying things if need be.

Regards,
Zoltan

[dave sudlow (daveandnikki)]

Sorry I've just found this, after filing bug # 117224 on the same issue.

[Oliver Wilson (wool-in-silver)]

I just had this confirmed by my colleague; she tried to install Feisty but found it ridiculous that we can't create partitions over 200gb in our installer. I'm tempted to agree - is anyone fixing this?

[AlpineCarver (acarv)]

workaround - i was able to make a partition larger than 200GB by booting a gparted liveCD 0.3.3.0, which i'd downloaded from sourceforge some time ago.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Whew. I just did some serious archaeology on this one, since I realised it was still assigned to me. Sorry for the late reply! It turns out that this is the same as bug 137878, and hence it's fixed in Ubuntu 7.10.