18.3 installer can't see partitions on SSD

[DMoriginal]

Thinkpad T61 (Core 2 Duo) with bios (not UEFI) and SSD with Win 7 installed on one partition of three, ACPI enabledin bios.

Mint Mate x64 18.3 from usb

Mint boots perfectly as a live disc, installer begins from Mate desktop, but installer shows only dev\sda. I want to dual boot with Win 7. The SSD is partitioned into three primary partitions, a 500MB NTFS labeled "System Active, Primary Partition," a 57G NTFS labeled "C Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition," and a 61G partition.

The last partition was first tried as Unallocated, then partitioned and formatted as exFAT and then as ext3. In all cases the installer only showed dev\sda and did not see the partitions.

The laptop only has 4G ram so I don't think I can use a VM and will have to dual boot. As it is the installer is only seeing the entire ssd and if I proceeded would wipe the Win 7 partition.

I have tried with the bios set to compatibility mode instead of ACPI, and with quick boot disabled,with no change.

Here are results from parted and fdisk, run from the live usb:

Code: Select all

mint@mint ~ $ sudo parted -l
Model: ATA ADATA SP600 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 128GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags:

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 1049kB 525MB 524MB primary ntfs boot
2 525MB 61.7GB 61.2GB primary ntfs
3 61.7GB 128GB 66.3GB primary ext3


Model: ADATA USB Flash Drive (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 7759MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags:

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 1049kB 7759MB 7758MB primary fat32 boot, lba

___________________________________________________________________

and the results of fdisk:

Code: Select all

Disk /dev/sda: 119.2 GiB, 128035676160 bytes, 250069680 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x6665bb51

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sda1 * 2048 1026047 1024000 500M 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 1026048 120519629 119493582 57G 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 120520704 250064895 129544192 61.8G 83 Linux


Disk /dev/sdb: 7.2 GiB, 7759462400 bytes, 15155200 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x075eb36d

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1 * 2048 15155199 15153152 7.2G c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

[WharfRat]

Try setting Sata mode to AHCI in the BIOS.

[DMoriginal]

Already tried, but did it again just to be sure. ACPI in my post was an error -- should have been AHCI.

The line to set where the boot should be installed shows only /dev/sda. The large box above that I assume should show all the partitions is entirely blank. Clicking on the install button brings up an error box with the msg. "No root file system defined" (if I've remembered it correctly.) This result is the same with all the bios variations mentioned. Win 7 boots correctly with all the bios variations (it was installed with AHCI set.)

[michael louwe]

@ DMoriginal, .......

The line to set where the boot should be installed shows only /dev/sda

That is actually correct, ie the "Device for boot loader installation" should be dev/sda(= the internal hard-drive), and not dev/sda1(= boot partition).

In your case, normally, the manual "Something else" install method is used to install LM alongside Windows and then proceed to manually partition the free/unallocated space(= /sda3) accordingly. ... viewtopic.php?f=42&t=122276 (manual partitioning Tutorial for Legacy BIOS mode and MBR/ms-dos disks)

[DMoriginal]

My first attempt was made with the partition (would be /dev/sda3) as unallocated. It was already partitioned however. I partitioned the ssd during the Win 7 install.

I'm perplexed at why the installer does not see any of the partitions. In the past I'm accustomed to the installer seeing the Win install and asking whether to keep it or install linux on the entire disk. Initially I suspected the problem here was due to the AHCI/compatibility setting or the use of an ssd. The ssd was used. Had it been a hdd I'd have Dban'ed it first, but I was wary of doing the procedure to reset an ssd, not having done it yet.

[DMoriginal]

In the instructions you linked, I don't get the first page shown that let's you choose between installing on the whole disk or "something else." It goes straight to the second page shown and any options to make partition changes are greyed out. Clicking on any of the options on that box crashes the installer.

[michael louwe]

@ DMoriginal, .......

...

.
Did you verify the LM Mate 18.3 64bit ISO file after downloading.?

With what program did you use to create the Live LM USB.?

[DMoriginal]

Not verified, but just successfully used to install 18.3 on an Acer Aspire 5736Z laptop, also a dual boot with Win 7, AHCI enabled and ssd. This would seem to point toward the Thinkpad bios or something in its configuration. I had no problem installing Mint Mate in a Thinkpad T40 in a dual boot with Win 7. IBM vintage good, Lenovo vintage bad?

[michael louwe]

@ DMoriginal, .......

In the instructions you linked, I don't get the first page shown that let's you choose between installing on the whole disk or "something else." It goes straight to the second page shown and any options to make partition changes are greyed out. Clicking on any of the options on that box crashes the installer.

.
This situation usually occurs when there are already 4 Primary partitions being used, eg by your Win 7 system. Ms-dos or MBR disks are limited to 4 Primary partitions and 2TB in size.
... Please boot Win 7 and use the Disk Management Tool to check for the presence of hidden or non-displayed or encrypted Primary partitions. If there are 4 Primary partitions being used by Win 7, then one of them will have to be deleted before LM can be installed alongside Win 7.

[DMoriginal]

Thanks Michael, I'll take a look. But since I first tried the install with only two Win partitions and the rest unallocated space (and I've been into the Win disk management tool to look at the partitions) I don't expect to find anything there.

[WharfRat]

DMoriginal ,

Just for the sake of curiosity can you post a gparted screen shot of that device

[DMoriginal]

Not a screen shot, but my original post contains a parted readout.

[WharfRat]

Not a screen shot, but my original post contains a parted readout.

Yea, I looked at that.

I was wondering if gparted had any visual info like a not accessible or unknown icon on the left of the partition list.

[DMoriginal]

Side note -- When Mint boots from the usb, this error msg appears twice:

a TPM error (6) occurred attempting to read a pcr value

[WharfRat]

That looks OK to me. I thought that the live session was perhaps mounting it so therefore it wouldn't be available to the installer.

One question I have is have you tried deleting that partition with gparted then creating an extended partition with two logicals, one for / and one to be used for swap

Apart from that I'm pretty much stumped

[DMoriginal]

I'll give that a try, but the installer will create three partitions, one for the system, one for home and a third for swap. And I'll search that error msg to see what that shows.

[WharfRat]

but the installer will create three partitions, one for the system, one for home and a third for swap

Not a chance of that happening as you're only allowed four primary partitions.

[DMoriginal]

Still no luck after creating a primary partition as ext4 and an extended partition for swap.

During the install attempts, after clicking to choose /dev/sda for the boot, two error msg come up:

Could not stat device /dev/mapper/ddf1: physical drives with CRC 2723863, expected FFFFFFFF on /dev/sda - No such file or directory.


Could not stat device /dev/mapper//dev/sda: "isw" and "ddf1" formats discovered (using ddf1)! - No such file or directory.

Nothing shows in the box where you would expect to see the partitions and clicking on any of the three buttons below the box (+, -, etc) will crash the installer.

[DMoriginal]

Forgot to mention, the TPM error msg is gone. It refers to a security chip with settings accessed in the bios. There are three settings: enabled, inactive and disabled. It is now set to disabled and while the error msg is gone on boot of the live disk, there is no change in the install problem re seeing the partitions.

[WharfRat]

Are there any signatures on that device that show with sudo wipefs /dev/sda