Could not allocate Partitions.

[Eddos]

I was planning on installing Redhat 7.3 on my home pc, but when i try to let it create partition's, i get an error:"Could not allocate partitions' and it doesn't create partitions.
Now i could create them myself, but it would like to know why i get this error.
My Seagate 40 GB has first 10 gb for Windows98, then 10gb free, and then 20gb for win2k.
Can that be the problem?

[chtla]

Refer the text of the below...

=======================================
> I'm trying to install RH8.0 on my laptop (having so far failed to install it
> on my server), I'm at the disk partitioning setup (again) and I choose
> "automatically partition", it correctly sees the disk and I choose "keep all
> partitions and use the existing space" to which it replies -
>
> "Could not allocate requested partitions : Partitioning failed : Could not
> allocate partitions"
>
> I have a 40gb IDE disk, 5gb FAT32 (XP), 5gb NTFS (data), 30gb free space.
> Linux recognises this (in disk druid) as -
>
> /dev/hda1 vfat 5005mb
> /dev/hda2 extended 4997mb
> /dev/hda5 NTFS/HPFS 4997mb
> free 28153mb
>
> I don't know enough to install manually using disk druid, so how do I get
> the auto partition to work?

The problem is that your extended partition is only 5 GB in size rather than
the entire rest of the drive. Making it the entire remaining size of the drive
will allow you to leave your extra NTFS partition untouched while allowing the
Red Hat installer to properly use the rest of the drive. An extended partition
is not like other partitions in that it does not in and of itself "use up" the
drive space; it is merely a "container" in which you can then allocate further
space on the rest of the drive. If it stops before the end of the drive it will
not be easy for any O/S to use that uncontained space. This diagram may help,
but you will need to be using a fixed (monospace) font in order to see it
properly:

BAD:
.--------------------------------------------------------------------.
|.----------------..------------------. |
|| vfat || Extended | |
|| ||.----------------. | UNUSABLE |
|| ||| NTFS | | |
|| ||`----------------'' | |
|`----------------'`------------------' |
`--------------------------------------------------------------------'

GOOD:
.--------------------------------------------------------------------.
|.----------------..------------------------------------------------.|
|| vfat || Extended ||
|| ||.----------------. ||
|| ||| NTFS | USABLE ||
|| ||`----------------' ||
|`----------------'`------------------------------------------------'|
`--------------------------------------------------------------------'

The difference is subtle but important. You should be able to use the program
"parted" to fix the partition in rescue mode and then try re-running the
installation process. (Alternately you could use something like Partition Magic
if you're the kind of person who likes to pay for things you can get for free.)

[Eddos]

So i have to convert the 10gb of free space into an extended partition?
I don't really understand his diagram :(

[DMR]

You can have up to 4 Primary partitions in Linux (or three Primary and one Extended). Since you haven't hit that limit yet, you should be able to create a Linux partition, although it's quite possible that you'll have to choose to manually partition in order to do it.

Run Windows fdisk on the drive and post the results; that will tell us your exact partition layout.

[Eddos]

I got:

Kind of strange that Linux DID create the partitions, but said he couldn't allocate them.