[SOLVED] Live CD Installer crashes in Manual Partition tool

[luggw1]

I'm attempting to install 64-bit 10.10 on a machine and when I get to the process of manually defining the partition table. The installer crashes. I get through about 6 entries and on the seventh, it dies with a python error that an instance has no parent - I don't remember the details. In my particular configuration I've got 14 partitions to set up on my 1 TB drive. Have others experienced this and how do I get around it?

I did a search, but didn't find any solutions.

Thanks for any help that can be provided.
Bill Lugg

[dibl]

Re: Live CD Installer crashes in Manual Partition tool

Make a Parted Magic Live CD or USB stick and use that to partition and format.

Then use the Kubuntu Alternate Install CD, and choose "manual" partitioning, then just choose the partitions, and don't format.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Live CD Installer crashes in Manual Partition tool

+1 on the alt cd.

I have 4 500gb hd's, four raid devices, 10 or 11 partitions each - no troubles using the Alt install cd with version 10.04

For some yet unkown reason, using 10.10 the alt cd incorrectly lettered my drives:

sda, sde, sdf, sdg

instead of

sda, sdb, sdc, sdd

but as long as I paid close attention, it installed fine.

In you case with only one HD it shouldn't be a problem.

[luggw1]

Re: Live CD Installer crashes in Manual Partition tool

Make a Parted Magic Live CD or USB stick and use that to partition and format.

Then use the Kubuntu Alternate Install CD, and choose "manual" partitioning, then just choose the partitions, and don't format.

Actually, the partitioning is already there, but when I install 10.10, I go through the manual process so that I can name the mount points properly. Also, it seems like I'd want to format the /, /tmp, /var and /opt partitions when I install a new version of the OS, right?

This is what I've done in the past and it has always seemed to work.

Thanks for the help.

[dibl]

Re: Live CD Installer crashes in Manual Partition tool

No, if you do the formatting (filesystem creation) with the Parted Magic CD, then there is no necessity to do it again with the Kubuntu CD.

Your process of using manual partitioning to select the mount points is correct. But why so many? If you want to mount another partition as /home to separate your data from the OS, I can understand, but what is the point of separate partitions for /tmp, /var, and /opt? That's not normally necessary or helpful for a typical home desktop system.

[luggw1]

Re: Live CD Installer crashes in Manual Partition tool

No, if you do the formatting (filesystem creation) with the Parted Magic CD, then there is no necessity to do it again with the Kubuntu CD.

Your process of using manual partitioning to select the mount points is correct. But why so many? If you want to mount another partition as /home to separate your data from the OS, I can understand, but what is the point of separate partitions for /tmp, /var, and /opt? That's not normally necessary or helpful for a typical home desktop system.

My point is that if the partitioning work is already done from the previous installation of 10.04, I don't see why I need the Parted Magic CD at all, unless it's simply to format the desired partitions - am I missing something...a good bet for me? By the way, how is the Parted Magic CD different than the Gparted Live CD (which I already have)? Also, is there danger in letting the Kubuntu installer do the formatting for me if that's all that is needed?

The partition structure comes from the book "Linux Administration: A Beginner's Guide" by Steve Shah and Wale Soyinka. In it they lobby for putting things like /tmp and /var on separate partitions since they contain data that is frequently changing and growing. I chose to do the same with /opt, though I'm thinking that was probably unnecessary.

Again, thanks for all the help. I really appreciate it.

Bill Lugg

[oshunluvr]

Re: Live CD Installer crashes in Manual Partition tool

I'm sure that book is well intended and likely you could make an argument for that method in the past - but the fifth edition of that book was published in 2008. That's a lot of time in the linux world. A new version of (K)Ubuntu has been released 4 or 5 times since it was printed and likely 1 or 2 more since they last updated the contents. Point being, all those separate partitions are sort of an outdated idea.

Back when hard drive space was expensive and IDE interfaces were slow there were ample reasons to spread your install out across partitions and drives and interfaces. Now-a-days it's more sensible to keep things together with a few exceptions;

1. swap is reported to work a bit faster if it's the first primary partition on a hard drive.
2. /home should be separate for many reasons and near the middle of the drive because it's the most accessed (supposedly better seek time at the center).
3. /boot must be separate if you're booting to a RAID partition (except RAID1).
4. additionally for the advanced user (and strictly my opinion); /tmp should be separate if your planning on several installs on the same system and you want to conserve some space (you can share it among all your installs easily). This can also prevent an accidentally full boot drive leaving you unable to log in.

Reasons against having /var /opt /usr or other partitions separate: It's nearly impossible to predict what partition will need how much space. Thus you will by design either have to resize one or more partitions OR you will unnecessarily waste hard drive space. The potential growth of a single partition is easily mitigated by using a sufficient initial size for your install.

Again just my opinion: If you use a separate /tmp ( 4 to 16gb depending on your use of your system) and a separate /home, 12gb will be way more than enough for Kubuntu and a ton of software.

Bottom line though: we'll help you out whatever path you choose!

[luggw1]

Re: Live CD Installer crashes in Manual Partition tool

Truth be told, I'm working from the fourth edition of the book so the advice is even a bit older.

Given your updates, it sounds like I can merge /var and /opt back into / and leave /tmp separate and life will be good. I'll even have a little less work to do. I don't do a lot of parallel installs of different distros now, but you never know...

Thanks for the guidance.
Bill Lugg

[dibl]

Re: Live CD Installer crashes in Manual Partition tool

oshunluvr's advice is good. Those old partitioning guidelines come from the days of 120MB hard disk drives that cost $1,000. It was all about efficient use of hard drive space, due to the cost of it. All of that is N/A today -- not that efficiency isn't still virtuous, but with hard drive space costing 6 cents per GB, it makes no sense to spend your time fiddling with partitioning like that.

I personally like the Parted Magic Live CD (actually the USB stick) because, in addition to the latest GParted, it has some other useful utilities -- benchmarking, lets you mount and unmount drives/partitions with a click, connect and disconnect networking with a click, it's just very handy when you're working with new unconfigured hardware. So, with a hard drive, I just boot the USB stick, and get the partitioning exactly as I want it with GParted, in advance of booting the Linux installation CD. Here's the deal -- your Kubuntu Live CD, with the Ubiquity installer, brings added complexity to the installation project:

- Ubiquity fails to recognize AHCI mode on some BIOS's
- Ubiquity gags on many BIOS's, when both a SATA and and IDE hard drive are connected
- you have to be alert to choose "manual" if you don't want Ubiquity to automatically jam the OS into a (possibly unwanted) new extended partition
- you have to be alert to install Grub where it needs to go, if that happens not to be the MBR of the first hard drive

With all of that to pay close attention to, why would you want to pile the partitioning task on as that much more complexity? Just get it done in advance with Parted Magic, and then you can scratch that off the list of things to worry about while you're installing Linux.

That's my two cents' worth on it.

[luggw1]

Re: Live CD Installer crashes in Manual Partition tool

Yep, downloaded and used Parted Magic and was mighty impressed. The ability to get to the web while fiddling with partitioning of my disk was a boon in itself. I am now posting this update from the updated system. The /var and /opt partitions are gone and all seems to be running well except for akonidai, which I expect will be fixed with an update.

Thanks for all the help

Bill Lugg

[oshunluvr]

Re: [SOLVED] Live CD Installer crashes in Manual Partition tool

There's a post somewhere on this forum about getting akonidai to play nice.

Glad you got it worked out - Happy new year!