1

Topic: Live CD is not usable

I am able to use GParted via the Ubuntu 9.04 Live CD and the Parted Magic Live CD, however, booting from the GParted Live CD has serious issues.

Version is 0.4.5-3.

I have done this on an old 486 desktop and a 1 year old notebook.
Same issues on both systems.

Both in the default mode and in the safe vga mode, the text in the toolbar and on the desktop are outright unreadable.

1. All the icons were not visible, likely shifted off of the screen to the left,

2. The dialog was also shifted left, and could not be moved.

3. The background was not any shade of green it was a very dark color, making the foreground text unreadable.

On the desktop, I use a resolution of 1280 x 1024, Do not know the resolution on the notebook(does 1440 x 770 sound right?).

In addition:

a. Did not list USB drive.
b. Did not see an option to convert partition from logical to primary.
c. Does not seem to be a downloadable manual.
d. The first time I tried, I could not find any way to restart, I had to power down the computer. The second time, the mouse inadvertently passed over something that was not otherwise visible, and I saw an Exit menu.

2

Re: Live CD is not usable

- I don't think GParted would work on 486 computers. As far as I know, a pentium-2 processor or later is required.

- Did you check the md5sum of the downloaded ISO file? It is possible that the download is broken.

- There is an alternative boot way, the forcevideo script. It allows to choose the graphics driver and the resolution. The VESA option with a resolution of 1024x768 pixels works on most systems. The minimal resolution to work with GParted is 800x600.

- There is no option to convert any primary partition to logical or logical to primary. Logical partitions are those that are located into an extended partition. To "convert" a logical partition to primary, you need to create a new primary partition in an unallocated part of the hard drive space.

- Documentation is located in the page "Documentation" of the GParted site:
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/documentation.php
The GParted Manual is up to date. Some other parts and tutorials are older.

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

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Re: Live CD is not usable

class413 wrote:

- I don't think GParted would work on 486 computers. As far as I know, a pentium-2 processor or later is required.

I misspoke, it is a pentium 2.

class413 wrote:

- Did you check the md5sum of the downloaded ISO file? It is possible that the download is broken.

The checksum at the web site is not given for the latest release, it states that the checksum is 4.5-2.

class413 wrote:

- There is an alternative boot way, the forcevideo script. It allows to choose the graphics driver and the resolution. The VESA option with a resolution of 1024x768 pixels works on most systems. The minimal resolution to work with GParted is 800x600.

Is that a listed boot option?

class413 wrote:

- There is no option to convert any primary partition to logical or logical to primary. Logical partitions are those that are located into an extended partition. To "convert" a logical partition to primary, you need to create a new primary partition in an unallocated part of the hard drive space.

There should be such an option. It's available in, at least, Partition Magic and Acronis Disk Director, which can be booted from floppy or CD.

class413 wrote:

- Documentation is located in the page "Documentation" of the GParted site:
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/documentation.php
The GParted Manual is up to date. Some other parts and tutorials are older.

I found that.

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Re: Live CD is not usable

Hello Howard,

The checksum at the web site is not given for the latest release, it states that the checksum is 4.5-2.

Here there are some checksums :

MD5SUMS
3a6a3ce9390031c33f634ed8b430fc40  gparted-live-0.4.5-3.iso
18cc27527dee9b07d10c1080da1e3500  gparted-live-0.4.5-5.iso

"Forcevideo" for "GParted GUI" can be called, when the system stops at the console prompt just before the GUI starts. This directly chooses the graphical mode for GUI. If you choose a wrong mode and can't quit, then press [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [Backspace] to quit to console. To try the next mode type sudo Forcevideo, confirm and look. if it's better.

class413 wrote:

- There is no option to convert any primary partition to logical or logical to primary.

I totally agree with that statement. You cannot  in one step cut a logical partition on an extended partition, keep it in the "air ",  delete that logical partition to get unallocated space within the extended partition, shrink it to get the unallocated space outside and then drop your former logical partition onto it. Aside from the fact, that an empty primary partition is available at all.

Of course, if you have enough unallocated space outside the extended partition and a primary position is left in partition table, feel free to copy or cut and paste whatever partition to that
location.



Regards
cmdr

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Re: Live CD is not usable

cmdr wrote:

Here there are some checksums :

MD5SUMS
3a6a3ce9390031c33f634ed8b430fc40  gparted-live-0.4.5-3.iso
18cc27527dee9b07d10c1080da1e3500  gparted-live-0.4.5-5.iso

The checksums match.

cmdr wrote:

"Forcevideo" for "GParted GUI" can be called, when the system stops at the console prompt just before the GUI starts. This directly chooses the graphical mode for GUI. If you choose a wrong mode and can't quit, then press [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [Backspace] to quit to console. To try the next mode type sudo Forcevideo, confirm and look. if it's better.

I'll try this at some point.

But that's not the issue.

GParted works fine from the Ubuntu Live CD, and the Parted Magic CD on two vastly different PCs, using whatever are the default video settings.

cmdr wrote:

I totally agree with that statement. You cannot  in one step cut a logical partition on an extended partition, keep it in the "air ",  delete that logical partition to get unallocated space within the extended partition, shrink it to get the unallocated space outside and then drop your former logical partition onto it. Aside from the fact, that an empty primary partition is available at all.

Of course, if you have enough unallocated space outside the extended partition and a primary position is left in partition table, feel free to copy or cut and paste whatever partition to that
location.

Both Partition Magic and Acronis Disk Director do the conversion in a matter of seconds, nothing is moved on the drive.

In some cases,  fdisk -l will warn that "Partition table entries are not in disk order.", but everything still seems to work.

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Re: Live CD is not usable

Hello Howard,

Both Partition Magic and Acronis Disk Director do the conversion in a matter of seconds, nothing is moved on the drive.

Yes , this is possible for the first and last logical volume in an extended partition, NOT for partitions inbetween ( AFAIK extended partition MUST be contiguous ) simply  by adapting MBR / relocating and adapting PBR of extended partition. I will do a manual test with an USB stick.

GParted works fine from the Ubuntu Live CD, and the Parted Magic CD on two vastly different PCs, using whatever are the default video settings.

Maybe a Linux video driver is missing. If you can find a X....log on a running Linux distro, it would be very kind to tell us, what driver is used to add it in a next version.  Name and serial number of your graphic card would also do. A known issue might also be a HDMI connection.

Regards
cmdr

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Re: Live CD is not usable

md5sum values for 0.4.5-3 are listed under "testing" versions. 0.4.5-2 is the latest "stable" version on the download page. The new sourceforge layout gives the latest files (0.4.5-5) on top, even for the stable version.

MD5SUMS
3a6a3ce9390031c33f634ed8b430fc40  gparted-live-0.4.5-3.iso
ba3e5f4c724d9930198a700e0ddd591d  gparted-live-0.4.5-4.iso
18cc27527dee9b07d10c1080da1e3500  gparted-live-0.4.5-5.iso
93f52d5b32fdc65496e0dc44f6c1981e  gparted-live-0.4.5-3.zip
ca5363e1025cf248b5356861290ddd76  gparted-live-0.4.5-4.zip
dadfe014346d333e9a0d340aa8e4c782  gparted-live-0.4.5-5.zip

SHA1SUMS
619898f85ad641465e33270810d3e705f46ce359  gparted-live-0.4.5-3.iso
0ad4c083001e2a4f2128ef6002137526f0ec35a4  gparted-live-0.4.5-4.iso
35c28ec9de055f900291a292b1c1d00da3a8d098  gparted-live-0.4.5-5.iso
9fb7c43ab9ac48a41e934bc2255282e25d6cd24b  gparted-live-0.4.5-3.zip
1dc20370a81e639311e48d0fff433e602e94b691  gparted-live-0.4.5-4.zip
3e55d36de276458e19679c501d0b586df2828c76  gparted-live-0.4.5-5.zip


It seems very strange to me, to have the same problem on the old pentium 2 and the new laptop.

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

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Re: Live CD is not usable

class413 wrote:

It seems very strange to me, to have the same problem on the old pentium 2 and the new laptop.

I agree.
There are likely missing video drivers on the GParted Live CD that are present on the Parted Magic Live Cd and the Ubuntu 9/04 Live CD and in Ubuntu 8.04, itself.

I'd say that would be the first place to check,

Desktop has a Radeon 7000 series video adapter.
Notebook has an NVIDIA GeForce 8600M Gs.

Or, so says device manager on each system.

My recollection is that the Radeon 7000 was alleged to be a widely used adapter.

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Re: Live CD is not usable

Hello Howard,
I did my test with an USB stick and it worked !!

I prepared the stick with four partitions :
1st primary : FAT 100MiB (sdc1)
2nd primary : Extended ; remaining space of 386 Mib (sdc2)
- 1st logical : FAT 100MiB(sdc5)
- 2nd logical : FAT 100MiB(sdc6)
- 3rd logical : FAT 186 MiB(sdc7)

unused: 3rd and 4th primary

I decided to "cut out" 1st logical without touching the physical location of any volume.
I adapted the left border of the extended partition to the end of 1st logical. Introduced 3rd primary with the starting point of 1st logical and its size.  The former Partition Boot Record of extended was dropped (unallocated). Finally I had to adapt the reduced size of the extended partition. All actions were done in Master Boot Record with "fdisk". 

And this is what resulted :
1st primary : FAT 100MiB (sdc1)
2nd primary : Extended ; remaining space of 386 Mib (sdc2)
- 1st logical : FAT 100MiB(sdc5; former sdc6)
- 2nd logical : FAT 100MiB(sdc6; former sdc7)
3rd primary : FAT 100MiB (sdc3; former sdc5)

To convert the last logical to primary can be done alike.
If I have a little bit more time, I will test, if its possible to convert the logical in the middle without corrupting the extended partition. Maybe it works, too !

Perhaps I write a script to do the conversion automatically. Conversion may then be done in the twinkling of an eye.

Regards
cmdr

PS: If 1st primary is an extended partition, you have at maximum 3 unused primaries as targets for conversion. Since all Windows installations use 1st primary for the operation system, there are only 2 primary left. Conversion is therefore a very limited task.

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Re: Live CD is not usable

cmdr wrote:

Hello Howard,
I did my test with an USB stick and it worked !!

Glad it worked for you, but my issue appears to be a video driver issue

GParted does work for  me using other Live CD, just not the GParted Libe CD.

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Re: Live CD is not usable

"Desktop has a Radeon 7000 series video adapter.
Notebook has an NVIDIA GeForce 8600M Gs."
Could you please boot GParted live, enter command line prompt, then run:
lspci -n
lspci
Please post the results.

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Re: Live CD is not usable

BTW, due to the new FRS on sourceforge, we still have some problems to add more info about some notes.
Therefore, for the checksum info, you can check:
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php
There are some checksums you can check.
Besides, a newer version 0.4.5-5 was released in the testing branch, so maybe give it a try.
Please let us know the results.

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Re: Live CD is not usable

stevenshiau wrote:

"Desktop has a Radeon 7000 series video adapter.
Notebook has an NVIDIA GeForce 8600M Gs."
Could you please boot GParted live, enter command line prompt, then run:
lspci -n
lspci
Please post the results.

How do I enter command line mode?
I cannot read anything on the screen.

First time I ran, I had to turn off the UPS, could not even shut down the comuter.

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Re: Live CD is not usable

Or you can use Ubuntu 9.04 Live CD to run those commands.

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Re: Live CD is not usable

The following was run in Ubuntu 9.04 on the desktop, not via the Ubumtu Live CD.

From lspci -n

00:00.0 0600: 8086:7190 (rev 02)
00:01.0 0604: 8086:7191 (rev 02)
00:07.0 0601: 8086:7110 (rev 02)
00:07.1 0101: 8086:7111 (rev 01)
00:07.2 0c03: 8086:7112 (rev 01)
00:07.3 0680: 8086:7113 (rev 02)
00:0d.0 0100: 9004:8178 (rev 01)
00:0e.0 0200: 10b7:9055 (rev 24)
00:0f.0 0c03: 1033:0035 (rev 43)
00:0f.1 0c03: 1033:0035 (rev 43)
00:0f.2 0c03: 1033:00e0 (rev 04)
01:00.0 0300: 1002:5159

The following is from lspci:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX Host bridge (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX AGP bridge (rev 02)
00:07.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ISA (rev 02)
00:07.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01)
00:07.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 USB (rev 01)
00:07.3 Bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 02)
00:0d.0 SCSI storage controller: Adaptec AHA-2940U/UW/D / AIC-7881U (rev 01)
00:0e.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905B 100BaseTX [Cyclone] (rev 24)
00:0f.0 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 43)
00:0f.1 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 43)
00:0f.2 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB 2.0 (rev 04)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon RV100 QY [Radeon 7000/VE]

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Re: Live CD is not usable

OK, so on your Ubuntu 9.04 desktop, which kernel module does it use ?
Please run "lsmod" and post the result.
Thanks.

Steven.

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Re: Live CD is not usable

stevenshiau wrote:

OK, so on your Ubuntu 9.04 desktop, which kernel module does it use ?
Please run "lsmod" and post the result.
Thanks.

Steven.

uname -r

Gives

2.6.28-11-generic

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Re: Live CD is not usable

No, I need the results of "lsmod", not "uname -r".

BTW, I will have a 3-day vacation... Will be online 3 days later.

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Re: Live CD is not usable

stevenshiau wrote:

No, I need the results of "lsmod", not "uname -r".

BTW, I will have a 3-day vacation... Will be online 3 days later.


I do not see the kernel listed in the output of lsmod.
To which module are you referring"

"vacation", what's that?
I'll have to check my dictionaries.

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Re: Live CD is not usable

I believe that Steven is looking for the list of kernel modules loaded.  The command "lsmod" should provide such a listing that will include which video drivers are loaded.

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Re: Live CD is not usable

gedakc wrote:

I believe that Steven is looking for the list of kernel modules loaded.  The command "lsmod" should provide such a listing that will include which video drivers are loaded.

Next time I boot to Ubuntu, I'll get those.
But I guess he really wants to see those from using the Parted Magic CD.

The problem is not with GParted, in Ubunntu or the Ubuntu Live CD, rather it is only a problem when using the GParted Live CD.
So comparison with the Parted Magic Live CD seems more appropriate.

I try to do lsmod with the Parted Magic Live CD in a few minutes.

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Re: Live CD is not usable

The following is lsmod from Ubuntu 9.04, after running System Upate, on my desktop with the Raden card.

Module                  Size  Used by
nls_iso8859_1          12032  1 
nls_cp437              13696  1 
vfat                   18816  1 
fat                    58272  1 vfat
binfmt_misc            16776  1 
radeon                342816  2 
drm                    96424  3 radeon
ppdev                  15620  0 
bridge                 56212  0 
stp                    10500  1 bridge
bnep                   20224  2 
lp                     17156  0 
parport                42220  2 ppdev,lp
pcspkr                 10496  0 
psmouse                61972  0 
serio_raw              13444  0 
i2c_piix4              18448  0 
intel_agp              34108  1 
shpchp                 40212  0 
agpgart                42696  2 drm,intel_agp
usb_storage            99648  2 
aic7xxx               134232  5 
3c59x                  49192  0 
mii                    13312  1 3c59x
scsi_transport_spi     30080  1 aic7xxx
fbcon                  46112  0 
tileblit               10752  1 fbcon
font                   16384  1 fbcon
bitblit                13824  1 fbcon
softcursor              9984  1 bitblit

The following is lsmod from Ubuntu 9.04 LiveCD on my desktop with the Raden card.

Module                  Size  Used by
binfmt_misc            16776  1 
radeon                342816  2 
drm                    96296  3 radeon
ppdev                  15620  0 
lp                     17156  0 
parport                42220  2 ppdev,lp
bridge                 56340  0 
stp                    10500  1 bridge
bnep                   20224  2 
psmouse                61972  0 
shpchp                 40212  0 
i2c_piix4              18448  0 
pcspkr                 10496  0 
serio_raw              13316  0 
intel_agp              34108  1 
agpgart                42696  2 drm,intel_agp
squashfs               46344  1 
aufs                  165924  1 
exportfs               12544  1 aufs
isofs                  39844  1 
nls_iso8859_1          12032  1 
nls_cp437              13696  2 
vfat                   18816  1 
fat                    58272  1 vfat
aic7xxx               134232  3 
3c59x                  49192  0 
mii                    13312  1 3c59x
scsi_transport_spi     30080  1 aic7xxx
fbcon                  46112  0 
tileblit               10752  1 fbcon
font                   16384  1 fbcon
bitblit                13824  1 fbcon
softcursor              9984  1 bitblit
usb_storage            82880  2 

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Re: Live CD is not usable

Hi,
what about this brand-new radeon driver ?

Regards
cmdr

PS: Concerning conversion extended partition -> primary partition :
Converting a logical partition in the "middle" leaves "overlapping partitions" as expected.  "parted" refuses to do anything. Windows (with Hitachi's "cfadisk.sys" driver for partitioned USB sticks) shows all partitions, but in drive managment the size of the stick is inflated, because the "unallocated space" within the extended partition is the converted new primary in reality and the new primary is added outside of course. Working with it is possible (even with Linux), but I would never use such a shaky construction ! "GParted" only shows unallocated space (since "parted" is paralyzed).  Topic finished.

24

Re: Live CD is not usable

cmdr wrote:

Hi,
what about this brand-new radeon driver ?

If the GParted Live CD is rebuilt with tat driver. I would then try it.

But that will not solve the same problem on te notebook with Nvidia.

cmdr wrote:

PS: Concerning conversion extended partition -> primary partition :
Converting a logical partition in the "middle" leaves "overlapping partitions" as expected.  "parted" refuses to do anything. Windows (with Hitachi's "cfadisk.sys" driver for partitioned USB sticks) shows all partitions, but in drive managment the size of the stick is inflated, because the "unallocated space" within the extended partition is the converted new primary in reality and the new primary is added outside of course. Working with it is possible (even with Linux), but I would never use such a shaky construction ! "GParted" only shows unallocated space (since "parted" is paralyzed).  Topic finished.

Of course it's a dirty solution, but there's no reason that it should not work.
The clean solution is to mage image backups, repartition the drive, then restore the files.
But in the real world, there's no reason to do that.

Where is the OFFICIAL spec for the MBR and Partition Table?
The only ting that matters is what that spec says.

25

Re: Live CD is not usable

Hello Howard,

I did a research within the PCI database of present "GParted" ... and your card is listed (vendor ID 1002; product ID 5159) . There is a generic radeon driver for it (smaller than "Ubuntu's" :102644 Bytes versus 342 816 Bytes). BTW, my desktop uses (Radeon RV 530 / X1600 ,1002:71e2) and works flawlessly. Unusual is only the used mode ( 1152 x 864, 16 bit, 75Hz), which does not match my monitors optimal values.

Of course it's a dirty solution, but there's no reason that it should not work.
The clean solution is to mage image backups, repartition the drive, then restore the files.
But in the real world, there's no reason to do that.

Windows drive management shows it like this :
http://www.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/f75793e63ad013fb8347ff8099fb0abc5g.jpg

My stick has a real size of 512MB (=489 MiB); 768 MB is totally wrong. What if a user partitions the "unused space" (green) in extended partition, which still holds in reality the former "middle" partition log2, the new 3rd primary ( total overlapping !)? Why is the 3rd logical "mirrored" as unallocated space (black) ?

Partition Table in MBR:
http://www.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/dec41d230c6554ec550475b7b025d4c15g.jpg

Here is an official information by M$ about its supported filesystems.

Regards
cmdr