Bug#37298: problems with cfdisk and fdisk

[henrymar@schoolmail.com]

Package: boot-floppies
Version: 2.1.9

Hi all.  I'm still having trouble partitioning my hard disks.  This is exactally what I'm doing:

After the rescue floppy boots and begins dbootstrap I switch to tty2 (Alt +F2) and open a terminal. I get:

# 

At this prompt I type

fdisk

And I get:

using /dev/hda as default device!
Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun or SGI disklabel.  Building a new DOS disk label.  Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.  After that, of course, the previoius content won't be recoverable.

command (m for help):

At this prompt I type:

n

And I get:

command action
  e   extended
  p   primary partition

At this prompt I type:

p

And I get:

Partition number (1-4):

At this prompt I type:

1

And I get:

First cylinder (1-872, default 1):

At this prompt I type:

<enter>

And I get:

Using default value 1
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-872, default 872):

At this prompt I type:

<enter>

And I get:

Using default value 872
command (m for help):

At this prompt I type:

p

And I get:

Disk /dev/hda/: 8 heads, 35 sectors, 872 cylinders
Units= cylinders of 280 * 512 bytes

Device    Boot    Start  End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1         1      872    122062+  83  LinuxNative

command (m for help):

At this prompt I type:

w

And I get:

The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.

WARNING: If you have created or modified any DOS 6.x partitions, pleas see the fdisk manual page for additional information.
#

At this prompt I fdisk again to check the same partition that I supposedly just created.  But when I check it with the (p)rint command, the table is blank.  

I swith back to the main terminal (Alt +F1) and the dbootstrap process still does not recognize my partition.

I have two hard disks on this machine and I have tried both with out any success.

In the past I have partitioned the master disk using cfdisk, but Linux failed or something so I used my BIOS to format the hard disk.  

The BIOS seems to recognize both hard disks.
The rescue floppy also recognize both hard disks but says something like:

"detected compressed image in sector 0"

Also, sometimes when I try fdisk I get a message that says:

Warning: Partition is type 0

I really want to partition my disk(s).

Any help would be appreciated.

Marvin Henry, Atlanta Georgia

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