Re-installing mint side-by-side with MS-W7S makes empty partition

[B Bobo]

1. Installed Mint 8 Helena Main side-by-side with Windows 7 Starter (pre-installed). MS-W7S occupied partitions 1 and 2, taking up very little of disk. Mint created an extended partition 3 containing one Linux partition and one Linux swap partition, to occupy the remaining majority of the disk.

2. Then, wanting Seamonkey-2.0.3 but not finding it in Mint's default list of available packages (or even in Mint Romeo), got it by adding debian unstable to sources.list, which ended up totally breaking Mint's package management (package manager, apt-get, dpkg-reconfigure -a all failed) - lesson learned there.

3. Decided to re-install Mint on top of the existing Mint partition. Tried to do it using side-by-side install with MS-W7S.

4. This time the Mint installation tool's partition creator insisted on creating two new partitions after, instead of on top of, the existing Linux and Linux swap partitions. There seemed to be no way to force it to re-use exactly the same extents as the existing Linux and Linux swap partitions. Is there a way to do that? Backed out of the installation process immediately, i.e. before the file installation stage.

5. Using Mint LiveCD and fdisk, manually deleted the Linux and Linux swap partitions, and then the extended partition that had held both of them. At this point, the disk still had the two partitions for MS-W7S, occupying a small space at the start of the disk.

6. Intended to re-install Mint side-by-side with the existing MS-W7S. This time, however, with the side-by-side option selected, the graphical partition tool insisted on allowing only a tiny range of partition sizes for Mint. Chose the "use maximum free space option" (or something like that) instead.

7. This time the Mint installation tool created an extended partition (after the MS-W7S partitions) containing one empty partition, one Linux partition, and a Linux swap partition. Not sure why it created an empty partition (no warnings or errors seen), but proceeded anyway.

8. Mint installation completed ok. The extended partition starts right after MS-W7S, with its first partition being an empty partition - literally zero cylinders long - and second partition being Linux, and the third, Linux swap.

9. Why is there the empty partition in the extended partition? It causes no harm but it's unnecessary and untidy. What is the Mint-recommended way of removing it?

10. What is the Mint-recommended way to re-install Mint onto exactly the same extents of Linux and Linux swap partitions from a previous Mint installation?

[B Bobo (yout-bobo123)]

Clarification: In step 3, I didn't mean the "side-by-side" option literally. What I meant was I wanted to install the new Mint side-by-side with the existing MS-W7S, i.e. to be adjacent to MS-W7S and to overwrite my previous Mint. But none of the options, such as "advanced", "use-max-free-space", and (obviously) "side-by-side", etc, let me choose to install by overwriting an existing Mint.

[Clement Lefebvre (clementlefebvre)]

Hi B Bobo,

It's not really a bug so I'll be closing this report, but you need an explanation nonetheless.

- About Debian, the format of the packages (.deb) is compatible across Mint, Ubuntu and Debian. But the packages (their name, structures, dependencies) are only compatible between Mint and Ubuntu, so it's alright to install a few individual Debian packages into Mint, now and then, but if you're going to pin repositories and mix things up between Mint/Ubuntu and Debian you're most definitely going to break things :)

- About the partitions. The first time, you only had Windows. So the installer suggested to create a new set of partitions and so that's what it did. The second time, although you wanted to overwrite Linux with a new installation, the installer saw that you had Windows and Linux and it assumed that you wanted to add yet another Linux system to end up with Windows + Linux (1) + Linux (2).. if that makes sense. What you needed to do was to choose the "custom partitioning" option in the installer, that way you could have simply indicated to the installer that you wanted the new system to be installed on the already existing Linux partition.

[B Bobo (yout-bobo123)]

Ok, thanks for the explanation. I tried the "custom partitioning" option, but it was not at all obvious to me how to use it to make it overwrite and reuse the existing Linux (1). How about providing a clear reinstallation option within custom partitioning or after it?

Also, could you answer my question in step 9 about the leftover empty partition? Why is there the empty partition in the extended partition? It causes no harm but it's unnecessary and untidy, and I'd like to know what is the Mint-recommended way of removing it.

[Clement Lefebvre (clementlefebvre)]

The recommended way is to opt for "custom partitioning", to select the Linux partition to be overwritten and to mark it as "formatted", "ext4" and "/".

About the extended partition, there's 4 primary... if you need more, you've got one of them acting as a group. It's nothing specific to this installer, it's the way the PC architecture was designed.

[B Bobo (yout-bobo123)]

Ok, thanks for the explanation about Mint's "custom partitioning" option.

I think I didn't explain my question very well. I understand partitioning and PC architecture, and I think there is a problem with the way the partitioning was created by Mint's partitioning tool. The extended partition is wrong because it looks like this:

1. NTFS partition
2. NTFS partition
3. Extended partition
3.1 Empty partition - this partition should not exist
3.2 Linux
3.3 Linux swap

instead of looking like this:

1. NTFS partition
2. NTFS partition
3. Extended partition
3.1 Linux
3.2 Linux swap

Notice the empty partition inside the extended partition. It's not necessary. What is the Mint-recommended way of removing it? I can of course remove it with standard low-level tools, but I'd like to know what is the recommended way of removing it in Mint. Thanks.

[B Bobo (yout-bobo123)]

I should add I made a lot of custom modifications to my Mint installation, which was a lot of work, and because of that I wish to keep my Mint installation intact, and remove the unnecessary empty partition inside the extended partition **without** re-installing Mint. What is Mint's recommended way of doing it?

[Clement Lefebvre (clementlefebvre)]

B Bobo: You need to use the forums to get help on the matter. This is for bugs... I'll answer quickly. You can boot from the liveCD and install gparted, using that tool you can remove the empty partition and resize the other one.

[B Bobo (yout-bobo123)]

Thanks for your patience and answer.

I still think it is a bug in Mint's partition tool. There is no need for it to create an empty partition in the extended partition, as it did during the installation. Do you agree it is a bug?

[Clement Lefebvre (clementlefebvre)]

I use the installer a lot and I've never seen this happen. If I can't reproduce the bug I have to assume you made a mistake in the manipulation of the software.

I'll mark it as upstream though to give the Ubiquity project a chance to confirm/infirm it.