fresh install. 'cfdisk /dev/sda' gives the following output:
"FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition 2: Partition ends in the final partial cylinder"
what could be the reason for this to happen and what might be the solution?
this is the output of 'fdisk -ucl /dev/sda':
Disk /dev/sda: 61.5 GB, 61492838400 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7476 cylinders, total 120103200 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 Disk identifier: 0x00030933
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 2048 3905535 1951744 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda2 * 3905536 5859327 976896 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 5859328 120102911 57121792 83 Linux
Best Answer
This is a known
cfdisk
bug, already fixed by some reports. Partitions haven't needed to be aligned to track boundaries for almost two decades, if indeed ever at all; and most modern partition table utilities don't perform such alignment. (Microsoft stopped doing it in its utilities, to much fanfare, several years ago.)But
cfdisk
was checking that they were track-aligned anyway, and complaining (with a fatal error that need not have been fatal) if they weren't.cfdisk
clearly wasn't what your installation program used to partition the disc. Partition tables created with tools that have dropped this nonsense track-alignment idea will of course givecfdisk
cause for complaint, and that's what has clearly happened here.Local fix: Don't use
cfdisk
. Usegparted
orparted
or some such. (As Rod Smith explains, they don't share a common codebase with thefdisk
family, and so won't share this bug.) Or bite the bullet and use GPT fdisk to switch to the EFI partition table format, which has none of this cylinders/heads/sectors residue at all.Temporary and service fix: Get the fixed
cfdisk
from your operating system vendor.Further reading