Trying to install on a ThinkPad x200s
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So, I'm trying to install Trisquel on a x200s using a Kingston A400 SSD with 2GB of RAM.
I partitioned the drive like so:
[*]/dev/sda1 ext4 /boot 200MB
[*]/dev/sda2 swap 12GB
[*]/dev/sda3 ext4 / 30GB
[*]/dev/sda4 ext4 /home 76.8GB
But when I start the installation I'm getting:
> Failed to create swap space. The creation of swap space in partition #2 of SCSI1 (0,0,0) (sda) failed.
And when I don't add a swap space I get:
> Failed to create a file system. The ext4 file system creation in partition #1 of SCSI1 (0,0,0)(sda) failed.
Not sure what's going here. Any advice is much appreciated.
First of all I'd like to welcome you to the Trisquel forums:
Welcome, enjoy your stay :)
To address your problem, please post the disk label you chose when defining the partitioning scheme.
Thank you!
I'm using GPT as the partition scheme.
That's good to know.
I better specify however: I was asking for the names you put in when creating the partitions, as I suspect that special characters in the names of the partitions or the disk itself, which might cause the errors you described. Basically, try installing with using as simple a name as possible, avoiding anything except letters and numbers to rule this out as a possible cause.
Oh, sorry. I should probably correct the post. No special characters in the names. See the attached image.
Thanks for updating. We can rule that out, then. I suggest trying the suggestion Magic Banana made.
I would use "SMART Data & Self-Tests..." in the "gear" menu of "Disks" (in the "System Settings") to check the health of the hardware. It can be done from the live system.
Ran the self-test. What should I be looking for? The overall assessment given was "Disk is OK".
Here are the results:
Well, if the disk is OK, then it is not a hardware problem. I would try to create the partition from GParted, a graphical to GNU parted (or more) which is on the live system. It may print some more meaningful error message.
I began to partition the drive using GParted and I got this: "Libparted Bug Found! Invalid partition table - recursive partition on /dev/sda."
Ignoring this I created my partition scheme and was given the same error message and a detailed report:
GParted 0.18.0 --enable-libparted-dmraid --enable-online-resize
Libparted 2.3
Create Primary Partition #1 (ext4, 200.00 MiB) on /dev/sda 00:00:29 (ERROR)
create empty partition 00:00:29 (SUCCESS)
path:/dev/sda1
start:2048
end:411647
size:409600 (200 MiB)
clear old file system signatures in /dev/sda1 00:00:00 (SUCCESS)
write 68.00 KiB of zeros at byte offset 0 00:00:00 (SUCCESS)
write 4.00 KiB of zeros at byte offset 67108864 00:00:00 (SUCCESS)
write 4.00 KiB of zeros at byte offset 209711104 00:00:00 (SUCCESS)
flush operating system cache of /dev/sda 00:00:00 (SUCCESS)
set partition type on /dev/sda1 00:00:00 (SUCCESS)
new partition type: ext4
create new ext4 file system 00:00:00 (ERROR)
mkfs.ext4 -L "/boot" /dev/sda1
mke2fs 1.42.9 (4-Feb-2014)
/dev/sda1 is apparently in use by the system; will not make a filesystem here!
libparted messages (INFO)
Invalid partition table - recursive partition on /dev/sda.
=================================
Create Primary Partition #2 (linux-swap, 11.72 GiB) on /dev/sda
=================================
Create Primary Partition #3 (ext4, 29.30 GiB) on /dev/sda
=================================
Create Primary Partition #4 (ext4, 70.58 GiB) on /dev/sda
=================================
/dev/sda1 is apparently in use by the system; will not make a filesystem here!
Is /dev/sda1 actually mounted? 'mount | grep /dev/sda1' executed in a terminal would tell.
Yes it was. I've booted from a USB and installing now.
It works! I did something silly and tried installing on the SSD in use. I ran the installer from a USB this time. Formatted the SSD and created a partition table. Everything works fine now.
Thanks so much for your help. Now I'm gonna play around with this.
I am a member!
Unrelated question: Why do you want 12GB of swap space? You have a small hdd, I doubt you actually need to waste that much space on swap. How much RAM do you have?
Have you tried formatting the drive and starting from scratch (i.e. creating a new partition table and partitioning the drive?).
"How much RAM do you have?"
...trying to install Trisquel on a x200s using a Kingston A400 SSD with 2GB of RAM.
"Have you tried formatting the drive and starting from scratch (i.e. creating a new partition table and partitioning the drive?)"
Trying that. Apparently the drive was still mounted. Will update with more details.
"Why do you want 12GB of swap space?"
Not sure about this — but someone recommended a swap space of 1.5x of RAM (eventually upgrading to 8GB). How much space should I be allocating?
As much swap as your RAM if you want to hibernate. Otherwise, it can be even less (but I do not recommend 0).
Explanations:
- If the system does not have swap and runs out of RAM, the kernel kills a process. It may happen even if the system has a huge amount of RAM, e.g., after running for hours a program suffering from a memory leak triggered in some special condition. The choice of the process to kill is rather arbitrary: the kernel may not kill the faulty process.
- If the system has swap and runs out of RAM, it becomes slow. Unbearably slow. I measured: reading data on my SSD is about 50 times slower than on my RAM, 150 times if the data is on HDD. Nobody will have the patience to use such a system until 16 GiB of swap are filled! Noticing that her system has become slow, the user saves her work (she cannot in the previous situation, without swap), maybe run 'top' (or another system monitor) to discover what process eats up the memory resources, and chooses what program (probably that one) to close to free some memory.
- Hibernating a system is dumping the main memory onto the swap (after zipping it).
No user will hibernate an unbearably slow system that is swapping. Consequently, having as much swap as RAM is enough. If hibernation is never used, swap is still needed but 1 GiB looks enough for a desktop system. For server systems, an alert should automatically be sent to the administrator is the system runs out of RAM. The intervention (figuring out the faulty program and closing it) is delayed in comparison with a desktop system, with the user sitting in front of the screen. That is why server systems had better have more swap.
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