FAT partition bug

[David Balažic]

During installation, after formatting the root fs I got this message :

----[!!] Partition disks-----

There are no possible configurations for this FAT type.

A bug has been discovered !!!

  Ignore
  Cancel
<Go Back>

------
Then I selected "Go Back" and got this :

----[!!] Partition disks-----

The test of the file system with type fat16 in partition #5 of IDE5 master (hde)
found uncorrected errors.
etc etc etc ...

I'll attach ma fdisk output.

[David Balažic (xerces8)]

Created an attachment (id=5440)
Output of sfdisk -d

[David Balažic (xerces8)]

Created an attachment (id=5441)
Output of fdisk -l

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Please attach /var/log/partman and /var/log/syslog from the installer.

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

Time to close this one?

[David Balažic (xerces8)]

I don't have time for it, so you can close it, as far as I am concerned.

[Risto H. Kurppa (risto.kurppa)]

Same message box here, on Ubuntu Feisty installer but I don't have the 'go back' - option. Ignore and cancel only, I think I'll press cancel first.

Here's my partition table:

Disk /dev/sda: 30.0 GB, 30005821440 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3648 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 46 369463+ a0 IBM Thinkpad hibernation
/dev/sda2 * 47 699 5242880+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda3 700 3648 23687842+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 700 1352 5245191 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 1353 1483 1052226 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7 1484 3648 17390331 83 Linux

It must be the hibernate partition that makes it fail. The installer recognizes it as FAT16 partition for some reason. I'll attach the logs requested above.

[Risto H. Kurppa (risto.kurppa)]

After pressin 'cancel' I get a message asking if I want to go back to hmm.. menu to fix the errors. It says that 'file system fat 16 check on device SCSI1 (0,0,0) (sda) partition 1 found errors that were not fixed. If you don't go back to partition table/menu and fix these errors, the partition will be used as is" (free translation from finnish :)

[Fanfarlo (fanfarlo)]

I have the same problem on my Acer Aspire 1310 during Feisty installation. Probably due to Fat16 partition. It says :

"There are no possible configurations for this fat type.

A bug has been discovered!!! "

When I go back, it asks me to fix this problem, if not it will use this partition as it is.

If I ignore it, it says :

"File System doesn't have expected sizes for Windows to like it. Cluster size is 1K (_604427651K expected); number of clusters is 7984 (_1208574392 expected); size of FATs is 32 sectors (134579880 expected).

Warning!"

I don't know what to do with that!

I'm afraid that, if I go on ignoring, nothing will work.

Sorry for my english.

[wolfger (wolfger)]

Marking as new, since the requested information was provided. However, this bug hasn't been touched in months. Does the problem still exist?

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

Risto and Fanfarlo, what is the status?

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

This bug is not waiting for information from Risto or Fanfarlo.

I expect that this bug has in practice gone away for most users, since we no longer automount partitions. HOWEVER, that does NOT mean that enthusiastic bug triagers should go ahead and close it, since I expect that it will still happen if people choose to mount those partitions by hand. It just won't be an installation blocker for most people any more, that's all (progress, but not completion).

The error simply means that parted can't figure out the right number of sectors per cluster and the file allocation table size. A comment in the source code reveals that this is a difficult task:

/* DO NOT EDIT THIS ALGORITHM!
 * As far as I can tell, this is the same algorithm used by Microsoft to
 * calculate the size of the file allocaion tables, and the number of clusters.
 * I have not verified this by dissassembling Microsoft code - I came to this
 * conclusion by empirical analysis (i.e. trial and error - this was HORRIBLE).
 *
 * If you think this code makes no sense, then you are right. I will restrain
 * the urge to inflict serious bodily harm on Microsoft people.
 */

[Risto H. Kurppa (risto.kurppa)]

Sorry, I cannot provide more information anymore, don't have access to computer with hibernation partition and all installs I've made after this on other computer have been ok.

r