Installer Doesn't Find Partitions - Failed to Format ext3/ext4 [Solution]

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Hi all

I've downloaded & booted up Kubuntu 10.04 & was so excited to make this fresh install since I was using 8.04.

The 1st problem is that I couldn't find any partitions, I could only see both of the hard drives as a single item with total space of both of them. I found a post
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3109470.0

Someone suggested to remove "dmraid"

sudo apt-get remove --purge dmraid

Well it did the trick & I was happy going through my partitions & when I hit the final button after the summary I got a message that it failed to format the partitions to ext4, I thought it was a bug regarding ext4 but then I couldn't format to ext3 either.

I thought “maybe” removing “dmraid” caused the problem so I started looking into the release notes & found that you can disable it when you boot.

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/1004

The automatic activation of dmraid can be disabled with the "nodmraid" boot option, available by pressing F6 in the CD boot menu. This can be useful for setups which have fakeraid metadata present on the disks, but where dmraid activation would be undesired or cause problems.

So I did, but I then I couldn't see anything at all in my hard drives table.

Was going mad cause it didn't just fail to install, but the 1st time it failed to format it actually re-partitioned the drives & I can no longer boot my gaming machine to Windows.

So here is what I did & perhaps what you should do in case you hit the same wall:


1. At the 1st menu screen when you boot the cd press “F6” & mark “nodmraid”

2. Launch “Try Kubuntu Without Intalling”

3. Once there on the desktop open the console & enter the command

sudo apt-get remove --purge dmraid

& follow steps to remove it

4. Then

sudo apt-get install gparted

& follow steps to install it.

5.Then launch the installer without migration support just in case, cause it has some bugs as mentioned in the release note by typing

ubiquity --no-migration-assistant

wala .. it works : D

[Teunis]

Re: Installer Doesn't Find Partitions - Failed to Format ext3/ext4 [Solution]

Thank you for the well written guidance.
Because this is a rare problem any reference like yours to a solution will be helpful to others.

In general I would suggest to do partitioning from a (GParted) Live CD and as a separate operation to the install.
Running the Kubuntu Live CD, then installing GParted and running it is also an option.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Installer Doesn't Find Partitions - Failed to Format ext3/ext4 [Solution]

Excellent Post... kudos