Problem with partitions and 12.04

Question

Can I have some help? I tried to install Ubuntu 12.04 on my laptop, that has some partitions:

• 2 ntfs (one of them is restricted by the system)
• 2 ext4s
• 1 Linux swap

But when I insert my CD, and run liveCD (as I am now), the installer can't see any of my partitions, it can see only /dev/sda as unallocated place, so does gparted (Fdisk seems ok).

On these partitions I have data, that I can use by windows on NTFS's. Here is some of this data:

The results from running parted:

root@ubuntu:~# parted 
GNU Parted 2.3 
Użycie /dev/sda 
Witamy w GNU Partedzie! Listę poleceń można zobaczyć po napisaniu 'help'. 
(parted)  print                                                            
Błąd: Nie można mieć partycji poza dyskiem!                           
(parted)

(it says: error: you can't have partition out of a disc! or something like that)

Answer 1

I believe that one of the partition tables is corrupted or inconsistent. I strongly advise backing up any important data immediately before attempting any repair.

To delve a little deeper you can try running parted (not gparted) on the drive and see if it gives you any more information. parted tends to dump the data to the screen in a more raw format, whereas gparted tries to display it nicely and may not be able to show anything if one of the tables is corrupted.

Open a terminal windows and just type

parted

It will complain that you are not root. That is OK, we don't want to edit or change anything anyway.

It will display some basic information including what device it is currently looking at. This should be /dev/sda. The prompt will be just

(parted) 

type the following to get a list of what parted thinks are the partitions on the current device:

print

You should get a list that looks something like the following:

(parted) print
Model: ATA MAXTOR STM325031 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 250GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type      File system     Flags
 1      32.3kB  21.0GB  21.0GB  primary   ext4            boot
 2      21.0GB  41.9GB  21.0GB  primary   ext4
 3      41.9GB  250GB   208GB   extended
 5      41.9GB  44.1GB  2147MB  logical   linux-swap(v1)
 6      44.1GB  250GB   206GB   logical   ext4

Paste this text table back into your question if you wish.

Update:

Given that we've now established that there appears to be a problem with your partition table, I hesitate to make any recommendation because these these usually end very badly.

You might want to have a look at this very good article on Ubuntu Forums where this exact problem is discussed. Maybe you can get your most critical data files onto a cloud backup server for recovery later. Ubuntu one is a free service up to a certain limit; just be sure that your data really is backed up and that you can access it when you need to.

Answer 2

I repaired it by removing ext4 partitions (that were prepared for being deleted because that was the place I wanted to install Ubuntu on) and restricted partition with boot sectors.

The reason was that this restricted small partition wasn't aligned right, so the end of partition wasn't at the cylinder boundary. After deleting my sda5, sda6 and sda7 every partitioning tool started working.

So I want to close this case, and give a advice - after entering a fdisk, toggle the dos compatibility flag, and check your partitions.

It's done for me.

Answer 3

root@ubuntu:~# parted 
GNU Parted 2.3 
Użycie /dev/sda 
Witamy w GNU Partedzie! Listę poleceń można zobaczyć po napisaniu 'help'. 
(parted)
print                                                            
Błąd: Nie można mieć partycji poza dyskiem!                           
(parted)

(it says: error: you can't have partition out of a disc! or something like that)

And @ObsessiveSSOℲ - it doesn't help, still /dev/sda is all i see.