cfdisk: Cannot seek on disk drive

[Michael Iles <thuja@internauts.ca>]

Hi, I'm trying to install Debian Linux 1.2 and things were going well until I got to the 'partition hard drive' part. The _first_ time I picked this choice I  editted my partition information to include a Linux and a Linux Swap partition. When I tried to save these changes, though, I got a message saying

     FATAL ERROR: Cannot seek on disk drive

Every subsequent time I try to start cfdisk, I immediately get the same message about not being able to seek, so now I can't even see the partition information.

I can run DOS fdisk and make changes to the partition information, and my pre-existing partitions (Win95 and WinNT) still function normally. I tried giving cfdisk the disk geometry information on the command-line, but it still gave me the error.

I have only one physical drive, a 3.8 gig Quantum Fireball that Linux correctly detects. (At least I think it does; I can see its name go by in all the hardware information that Linux prints while starting.) If I switch to a different console, though, I can't see anything on the drive (there's nothing in the /target directory). It did read the partition information _once_ though, so I assume it can see the drive.

What's going on here? Can anyone help me on this?

Mike