Complete Installation SUSE but get a new problem

[Kuay]

Hey guys, thanks for every comment. Right now, I succeed in installation SUSE on my ThinkPad T43 and everythnig works well, Access IBM works.

However, I got the problem when I run the Partition Magic. It shows that my harddisk 's Partition is "Bad" and it ask me if I want to fix it. What should I do to fix my partition? I first select "no" because I am afraid if I choosed "Yes", my boot loader(GRUB) may broke.

Is anybody know how to fix this problem?

[magneto]

I have the same problem but I am not sure if it is a real problem. The partition table is seen very clear to linux but only partition magic finds a problem. I think the problem comes from the rescue partition because if you changed the type of this partition to vfat, PM gets confused.

I had tried to fix by choosing 'yes' at the beginning of PM but nothing changed, neither it fixed the error nor broke Grub.

If you are not planning to repartition your drive ( which I do not recommend because of the risk of breaking grub & windows-linux partitions), leave it like that. I am using suse on t43p fo about 6 months, I didn't encounter any problem related to that.

[pundit]

Why are you even running partition magic?

[Kuay]

Thanks magneto I remember that I faced this problem before when I install Linux onto my desktop. At that time, I selected "yes" and there was the problem with my GRUB so I could not boot my system.

Is there any partiotion program that doesn't have the problem like PM does?

To pundit, I run PM because I want to use it partition another HDD and just want to chack if there any problem with my partition. Do you have any ideas to fix this problem? Thanks.

[pundit]

To pundit, I run PM because I want to use it partition another HDD and just want to chack if there any problem with my partition. Do you have any ideas to fix this problem?

I've don't use partition magic (or other proprietary tools), so I don't even know what its problem is, let alone how it can be fixed.

Did you partition your drives using partition magic before setting up SUSE?

[Kuay]

Yes, pundit. I use PM to resize my windows partition first and then install SUSE.

[pundit]

I would ask you "why you did that", but no matter, it is done.

Did it complain after you partitioned it with PM and before you installed SUSE?

[Kuay]

It did not complain anything before I installed SUSE. After I finish my SUSE installation, I used PM to check my parttion and found that it complained about the bad partition table. I use YasT to check my partition it shows like this:
Device Size Type Mount Start End Label
/dev/sda 55.8 GB HTS541060G9AT00 0 7295
/dev/sda1 20 GB HPFS/NTFS /windows/C 0 2611
/dev/sda2 3.9 GB Vendor diag 6782 7295 IBM_SERVICE
/dev/sda3 20 GB HPFS/NTFS /windows/D 2611 5322
/dev/sda4 11.9 GB Extended 5244 6781
/dev/sda5 1004MB Linux swap swap 5244 5351
/dev/sda6 10.9 GB Linux native / 5352 6781

(Sorry I don't know how to insert image )

According to this partition configuration, is there anyproblem with it?

Can I reorder the partition? I want it to show in the new order according to it's Start and it's End, so it should be,(from the old device) sda1, sda3, sda4, sda5, sda6, sda2. How can I change the order?

Thanks

[pundit]

No, there doesn't seem to be any problems from the information you've posted.

And why do you want to reorder the partitions?

[smugiri]

Do NOT allow partition magic to change the info, you will end up with all types of problems.

I do not know enough about operating systems at this level to give a definitive answer but here is what I think is going on from my tests. Partition Magic ( I use v7.0) does a check to make sure that several things are happening

1. That all the partitions start/end at cylinder boundaries
2. That the partition table and it's backup copy match

I have tried to do some research into the "why" of this without much success because I have run into this problem a bunch of times. I have found that sometime SuSE installs do not seem to update the backup partition tables. SuSE also allows the creation of partitions that do not end on cylinder boundaries (which I think is an old rule to accomodate BIOSes that had the 1024 cylinder issue).

When Partition Magic finds a setup where the boundaries do not match, it asks to update the partition table to boundaries that match and return with a message that it has fixed the issue so that things are now OK.

If you are really unlucky, on completing the fix, it will label the entire disk as bad if the partition with the issue was the Windows partition.

If it was some other (not the Windows) partition, on rebooting however, you will find that they are not. LINUX will probably be broken (if you use GRUB/LILO on the MBR as a bootloader, if the bootloader is in the linux root folder, GRUB/LILO (the bootloader) will NOT run at all and you will not be able to boot ANY os. If the boot loader has its own partition then the bootloader will work OK but the machine will not be able to boot any OS on selelcting one in the bootloader menu. If you use Windows for the bootmanager, Windows will boot OK but LINUX will not.

Long story short, don't do it. If you choose not to fix, you will not be able to use Partition Magic but if your setup is working OK, trust me, you should spare yourself the grief of having to re-install the HPA, Windows and LINUX afresh from scratch.

[smugiri]

The second part of your question, how to list the partitions in order.

You can NOT.

YaST here is simply acting as a front end for the fdisk tool: to get the same info, you should drop to a shell and type

fdisk -l

It will show you the same info with the message "partitions are not in order"

The partitions are created in the order in which you created them. For example, if you install Windows first then create a linux swap and a linux root you will get

windows -> hda1
linux swap -> hda2
linux root -> hda3

There could be a couple of reasons you have "sda" rather than "hda"

1. Your drive is some sort of USB
2. You have a SCSI machine
3. You have a SATA (PATA)? rather than IDE

From your listing, you have

sda - a single 60gb drive with 6 partitions

sda1 - created first was windows c formatted for NTFS
sda2 - created second was the IBM HPA (little weird, should be the HPA then C ... )
sda3 - created 3rd was windows d formatted NTFS
sda4 - created 4th is an extended partition
sda5 - created 5th was a 1004 linux swap (BTW, this size could get you in trouble with hibernate where you always want 2*RAM size, assuming you have 512MB, you should created a 1024 mb swap)
sda6 - linux root in reiser fs created last

[Kuay]

Thanks fro everybody.

For more information. When I start the PM, it shows the error like this:

"Partition Magic has detected an error 116 on the partition starting at
sector 83923560 at disk 1. The starting LBA value is 83923560 and the
CHS value is 15483824. The LBA and the CHS values must be equal,
Partition Magic has verified that the LBA value is correct and can fix the CHS value.

At this point I selected "No" because I am afraid if I choose "Yes", there would be the problem with my GRUB.

After I selected "No", the PM showed "Error 117 Partition's drive letter can not be identified.

How to fix this?

[pundit]

Why are you bothering with partition magic?

If everything works as it should, don't trust it when it keeps screaming "error".

[smugiri]

Partition Magic will not work since it expects the LBA and CHS values to be equal for ALL partitions. They are not and you asked Partition Magic not to fix it.

If you change them, you will ruin your partitioning and will most likely lose all the partitions aside from drive C and the IBM HPA.

Like I said before, if your machine is working OK, ignore this error and stop using Partition Magic at this point.

[Kuay]

Thanks for your advice. I just wonder if I can fix it But everything works well. That's OK.