Hello,
Please forgive me for this newbie question. I am new to linux and
Debian.
I have a question regarding installation. I have a 13 gig hard drive
which I partitioned this past weekend so that I could dual boot Debian
Linux alongside Windows 98. Using the fips program, I split my hard drive
into two 6.5 Gig drives. Everything seemed to go fine.
Last night I began my installation of Debian (slink). Very soon into
the
process, it told me that there was no linux swap partitions preset on my
system and it told me to partition my hard disk to add "linux native" and
"linux swap" partitions to my disk.
So, knowing that I needed to create a linux swap, I did as it told me
and
sought to partition the /dev/hda drive. But then it gave me an error
message saying "Fatal Error: Bad primary partition." Then it told me
"cfdisk has failed while trying to repartition your disk. That may mean
your disk's partition table is corrupt, or your disk is 'factory clean.' I
may wipe out your disk's current partition table and run cfdisk again.
Warning: You will lost any data currently on that disk. Are you sure you
want me to do this?"
I would like to make sure I understand what has happened here. I think
this all means that when I used Fips to partition my hard drive, that
something went wrong. Furthermore, the only solution is for the Debian
Installation program to clear the entire hard drive and start again,
essentially wiping out Windows and everything running off of Windows. Is
this correct? Is there anyway to fix this problem without erasing
everything? Or am I wrong in what I think is happening here?
Thanks very much!
Bryan Walton
