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timcuth
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join:2000-09-18
Pelham, AL
Technicolor ET2251

1 edit

timcuth

Premium Member

PC-BSD installation fail (Solved)

I want to install PC-BSD alongside some Linux distros. I created a 55 GB partition for it. The installer runs and the hardware checker says my system is good for BSD. When I select the partition and try to actually start installation, it fails immediately with "unknown PTYPE: 15".

I asked on their irc channel and the only idea anyone had is that it can't be installed to a GPT partition. The Handbook clearly says it can. I have tried it with both the Basic and Advanced disk selector methods, telling it to use GPT in the Advanced method. Both ways give the exact same failure.

I have searched the internet and can't find anything similar. I find a lot of articles that mention installing to GPT, but they all seem to indicate that you just do it and it works. Maybe the GPT partition is not really the problem. The error message gives no info other than what I stated.

Any ideas?

Tim
dave
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join:2000-05-04
not in ohio

2 edits

dave

Premium Member

Re: PC-BSD installation fail

If PTYPE 15 means partition type 15 decimal, then it's an obsolete Windows 95 partition type ('extended partition LBA mapped').

Maybe your partitioning software needs to have some of the rust sanded off?

The partition type may only refer to MBR disks; are you sure this is GPT? For GPT, there's a dummy MBR which specifies a partition type of 0xee.

»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GU ··· LBA_0.29

nwrickert
Mod
join:2004-09-04
Geneva, IL

nwrickert

Mod

said by dave:

If PTYPE 15 means partition type 15 decimal, then it's an obsolete Windows 95 partition type ('extended partition LBA mapped').

If the disk is GPT partitioned, then there cannot be extended partitions as I understand it.
dave
Premium Member
join:2000-05-04
not in ohio

dave

Premium Member

Agreed, but what else could 'ptype: 15' mean?

GPT partitions are identified by GUIDs (!), not 8-bit integers.

nwrickert
Mod
join:2004-09-04
Geneva, IL

nwrickert

Mod

said by dave:

Agreed, but what else could 'ptype: 15' mean?

I have no idea. However, a google search turns up some hits, none of which have to do with partitions or with BSD.

timcuth
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Premium Member
join:2000-09-18
Pelham, AL
Technicolor ET2251

timcuth

Premium Member

Well, it is partition sdb15 in Linux parlance, so maybe the message is just saying which partition.

First, I created it as type a504 (FreeBSD ZFS). The Handbook says it doesn't matter, as it will change it anyway. When a504 didn't work, I tried 8300 (standard Linux data). The error message was the same.

My two SATA III drives total 3 TB. They are both GPT partitioned, and they have quite a few GPT partitions on them. There are no extended partitions of any kind. My gdisk program is version 0.8.10-1 from the Debian unstable repository.

Here is the current partition info for that drive:

Disk /dev/sdb: 3907029168 sectors, 1.8 TiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 057E767D-1AA6-4E96-A940-B540B5580A82
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 3907029134
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 3407902829 sectors (1.6 TiB)
 
Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1            2048            6143   2.0 MiB     EF02  BIOS boot partition
   2            6144        62920703   30.0 GiB    8300  Linux filesystem
   3      1954551808      1971329023   8.0 GiB     8200  Linux swap
  10        62920704       188749823   60.0 GiB    0700  
  11      2218817536      2260760575   20.0 GiB    8300  Linux filesystem
  12      2260760576      2323675135   30.0 GiB    8300  Linux filesystem
  13      2323675136      2355132415   15.0 GiB    8300  Linux filesystem
  14      2355132416      2397075455   20.0 GiB    8300  Linux filesystem
  15       188749824       304093183   55.0 GiB    8300  Linux filesystem
 

Tim
timcuth

timcuth

Premium Member

PS - Thanks, everyone, for helping me.

Tim

nwrickert
Mod
join:2004-09-04
Geneva, IL

nwrickert to timcuth

Mod

to timcuth
said by timcuth:

First, I created it as type a504 (FreeBSD ZFS). The Handbook says it doesn't matter, as it will change it anyway. When a504 didn't work, I tried 8300 (standard Linux data). The error message was the same.

Maybe try tagging it as NTFS. Apparently some software has very limited awareness of allowable partition types.

timcuth
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Premium Member
join:2000-09-18
Pelham, AL
Technicolor ET2251

timcuth

Premium Member

Thanks. I made two changes, and the install succeeded. I'm not sure which change allowed success. I used sdb4 instead of sdb15, and I made the initial partition type 0700 (Microsoft data).

Now, the host machine won't boot, going to a grub rescue prompt. So, on to a new problem, lol.

Tim