'Can not crate new partition' when dual booting Windows

General system EndeavourOS installation
1

Hi again!

I am attempting a fresh install of EOS alongside Windows, with my home directory in a separate drive. I am following this guide in the forums.

When I go make the root partition as indicated in the guide, I get the following message:

The partition table on drive name already has 4 primary partitions, and no more can be added. Please remove one primary partition and add an extended partition, instead.

The strange thing is, I have already done this in the past, following the exact guide, and have never gotten that error.

My partitons look like this:

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If there are any logs I can provide I will do my best.

Thanks!

2

That looks like a legacy install. You don’t need to create an EFI partition.

It that drive has an MBR partition table, then the max number of primary partitions is 4.

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3

From gparted, create an extended partition on the free space. Then you can split it to your liking into different logical volumes.

MBR partition-table only can handle 4 primary partitions (maximum). So, extended partitions with logical volumes in them is a way to evade this mess, thereby reducing the no. of primary partitions to 3 only!

GPT partition-tables can handle many more primary partitions (I forgot, how many).

As per one disk / drive there is only one partition-table, always.

:point_up_2:

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128

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5

I assume partitions sda1 … sda3 are primary partitions.

Maybe the partition that currently has /boot/efi is the one you tried to make an extended partition?
If you don’t need that partition (by Windows), you can re-use it and add it as an extended partition.

Before changing anything, see what files you have in that “New partition”.

6

From the screenshot, it doesn’t look like an existing partition. It is something being created in Calamares.

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Thanks for the quick response. Sorry I took some time, power went out :sweat_smile:

That’s right.

Does this look good to you? Do I need still need a boot, or is this OK? Sorry, kind of new to partitioning. Maybe this should be moved to the Newbie section.

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Also, my previous home directory is in another drive. Do I need to somehow manually point gparted to it? I have a bunch of files (dotfiles, personal stuff, etc) from my previous install so I don’t want to accidentally wipe it.

8

No, you don’t need a separate /boot

You can point the installer to it if you want, but I wouldn’t. I would do it post-install.

That way you don’t risk the installer overwriting anything.

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Alright, that did it! Thanks a ton!

Do you have a guide for this? I’ve never done it myself.

10

I don’t have a guide but it is fairly simple.

Add an /etc/fstab entry for the home partition then sudo mount /home. If it works, reboot.

If you don’t know how to make an fstab entry, after you install and boot into your new installation, come back and post the output of lsblk -o name,type,fstype,label,size,mountpoint,uuid

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Unfortunately I don’t know how to. Here’s the output:

NAME   TYPE FSTYPE LABEL             SIZE MOUNTPOINT                                             UUID
sda    disk                        894,3G                                                        
├─sda1 part ntfs   System Reserved    50M                                                        0E1E94BE1E949FEF
├─sda2 part ntfs                   194,8G /run/media/albert/1018A2F618A2DA4C                     1018A2F618A2DA4C
├─sda3 part ntfs                     509M                                                        FEE443BCE4437645
├─sda4 part                            1K                                                        
├─sda5 part ext4                   691,1G /                                                      b6f34657-cda8-4894-829a-05c0d9643b02
└─sda6 part swap                     7,8G [SWAP]                                                 a1d9d106-eb6d-47f3-a637-8ec539e731ba
sdb    disk                          1,8T                                                        
├─sdb1 part ntfs   Recuperación      499M                                                        006E5B126E5B0038
├─sdb2 part vfat                     100M                                                        585C-D186
├─sdb3 part                           16M                                                        
├─sdb4 part ntfs                     1,1T /run/media/albert/00C205CBC205C63E                     00C205CBC205C63E
└─sdb5 part ext4                   757,4G /run/media/albert/1d04099f-26a5-4444-97f1-a54ffd580f67 1d04099f-26a5-4444-97f1-a54ffd580f67
sr0    rom                          1024M
12

Try this:

UUID=1d04099f-26a5-4444-97f1-a54ffd580f67  /home  ext4  rw,relatime  0 2

Be sure to test it with sudo mount /home before rebooting.

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I don’t think it works:

[albert@chiangmai ~]$ UUID=1d04099f-26a5-4444-97f1-a54ffd580f67  /home  ext4  rw,relatime  0 2
bash: /home: Is a directory
[albert@chiangmai ~]$ sudo mount /home
mount: /home: can't find in /etc/fstab.
14

Can you not simply copy the needed files over to your new home, without mounting it at all?

Afterwards chown them, like this:

chown -R albert <folder-in-home/> # for a folder, recursively

and chown albert <file-in-home> # for single files

15

In that case my root and home directories would be sharing the same partition, in the same drive, wouldn’t they? I want to re-use the partition I had in my previous install, which is in my other drive. Please correct me if I’m mistaken.

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It is a decision you can only make. If you can’t mount your old home, but feel you need it, then check out the Arch-Wiki on fstab.

17

The line that starts with UUID isn’t a command.

You are supposed to add that line to the file /etc/fstab

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Oh! Wow, I feel dumb.

That did it! Everything is back to how it was before reinstalling.

Thanks for the help everyone!! This is why I stick with EOS, this forum is the best.

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19

So you should mark dalto’s post as a solution to this thread.

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