Fedora 2 install error, says not enough HDD space

[paulcy82]

Hello,
I am trying to install Fedora care 2 on a 700mhz AMD, 192mb RAM, 40GB HDD computer. This computer had Fedora running on it once before so I know this should work. I start the install process and when it asks me what kind of a installation type I choose custom, because I will like to eventually use this for a web server, but for now I just want it up to play with it. I then choose for an automatic partition, this is not a dual boot box, just fedora installed. I get to the disk setup screen and I choose to remove all partitions on this system, then I see the following:
/dev/hda
/dev/hda1 /boot 100mb
/dev/hda2 / 37000mb ext3
/dev/hda3 swap 512mb
I click next, I select the boot loader, there is only one there. After I choose my packages, the computer starts to install them. When the screen says 'Transferrin install image to hard drive.... this gets only half way and errors out saying that I do not have enough HDD space. I have tried 3 different hard drives, manually partition and even installing the min amount of packages. Please help me, this is driving me crazy!!!

 

[thedaver]

Try booting the Fedora disk in recovery mode and use fdisk from the CD to physically erase the partition information that may already be on the drive.

Also, is there anything special about the drive? SATA?

D.E.R. Management - IT Project Management Consulting

http://www.dermanagement.com/

 

[paulcy82]

I do not see the fdisk option, when I boot from the CD I ran the rescue mode. This did some checks and some other things. I am trying the install again and will post with my results

 

[paulcy82]

I ran the install again and I got the same error, When the screen says 'Transfering install image to hard drive....' this gets only half way and errors out saying that I do not have enough HDD space. The drive is not a SATA drive it is a standard ATA drive. Fedora wants to configure my boot loader to hda2, is that right. Why would it not be configured to '/dev/hda1 /boot 100mb'

 

[thedaver]

I didn't mean to let Fedora do any actual rescue-ing, just to get booted to a prompt to run fdisk. You can download the Knoppix distribution - or others - to get a boot prompt with fdisk.

Don't worry about where the boot loader lands, accept the defaults.

D.E.R. Management - IT Project Management Consulting

http://www.dermanagement.com/

 

[paulcy82]

I used a disk wipe program and wiped the entire HDD, I tried to auto and manually set up my partitions and I still get the same error

 

[pansophic]

My suggestion is to NEVER let the OS determine how your disk should be partitioned, but it really shouldn't be an issue.

Ideally you would build your disk in such a way that you don't have to worry about a rebuild modifying (or wiping out in your case) your data.

First, the 100MB /boot partition hasn't been required for many years. It was a work around for drives larger than 8GB when that was a novel item. I would eliminate it.

Also, I would break the drive down into partitions that make sense. So if you intend to run your web server from the /var partition, make that a separate partition. That way if you must reinstall, you can tell the installer not to format that partition and you will save yourself a good deal of restore time.

And a swap partition of 512MB would indicate that this computer only has about 256MB of memory. OK for a home web server, but not for any form of production. If you are getting more that just a few hits a minute, this machine will spend more time swapping than serving.

Try a partion table more like this and see if it works out for you.

/dev/hda1 / 6000MB ext3
/dev/hda5 swap 512MB (should be 2 to 3 times your physical memory)
/dev/hda6 /usr 6000MB ext3
/dev/hda7 /home 6000MB ext3
/dev/hda8 /var 21500MB ext3

Notice that everything above /dev/hda1 is in an extended partion rather than a physical partition. This allows you to have more than 4 partitions. The sizes are really irrelevant, other than I think that FC may be having an issue resolving the size of your partion, so breaking the partition down into smaller ones may solve that problem.

I'm not a big fan of the newer partitioning tools, and still prefer fdisk (it is the Expert partitioning tool on Fedora). However, disk druid should allow you to perform similar partitioning.

You will probably want to apply labels to these partitions, as they become difficult to distinguish during a rebuild. A label will show up during the rebuild, so you'll know which partitions to allow formatting on, and which ones you should not reformat.

Good luck!


pansophic

 

[paulcy82]

I have written zeros to the HDD again using Maxtor utilities. I have run DFT on the drive and the drive passes. I have verified that the disc is good. I have even downloaded and burned a new one. I have tried different HDD's. I then tried to manually create partitions again using disk druid. I created two partitions, one swap of size 512mb and the other as / 'root' for the rest of the space, being about 38GB. I get the same error, 'your HDD is full' when fedora trys to transfer everything to install, any have any other suggestions, please?

 

[pansophic]

Have you tried it with smaller partitions yet? It is possible that your hardware is actually reporting a disk size that is contrary to what the OS expects. Keeping partitions under 8 GB (particularly the space for / and /usr) may resolve that issue.

Don't know if it will work, but I'd give it a try. It is apparent that installing with the entire drive partitioned is not working for some reason.


pansophic

 

[thedaver]

I did a little googling and found one obscure thread reference that mentions putting your drives into LBA mode via BIOS setup. Don't know if that's an option, but it helped someone else.

D.E.R. Management - IT Project Management Consulting

http://www.dermanagement.com/