Sstrhsrtj

(Asking here as I haven't had a response to a post on Ask Fedora)

I'm trying to install Fedora 19 Gnome as a dual boot system on my HP Envy laptop (hardware specifications HP ENVY 6-1202sa, although I think the hard drive is a hybrid drive with possibly an SSD cache [unsure])

I have successfully created a USB live disc which I can boot up and run the live disc with no problems, but when I choose the option to install to hard drive none of my hard drives are available?

As per the suggestion in the linked post I've deleted the recovery partition (from the HP recovery utility in Windows) but this didn't solve the problem, the drives are still not visible to the installer.

[liveuser@localhost ~]$ lsblk

NAME             MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT

sda                8:0    0 465.8G  0 disk 

├─sda1             8:1    0   400M  0 part 

├─sda2             8:2    0   260M  0 part 

├─sda3             8:3    0   128M  0 part 

└─sda4             8:4    0   465G  0 part 

sdb                8:16   0  29.8G  0 disk 

└─sdb1             8:17   0     8G  0 part 

sdc                8:32   1  14.9G  0 disk 

└─sdc1             8:33   1  14.9G  0 part /run/initramfs/live

loop0              7:0    0    12K  1 loop 

loop1              7:1    0   2.2M  1 loop 

└─live-osimg-min 253:1    0     8G  1 dm   

loop2              7:2    0 887.4M  1 loop 

loop3              7:3    0     8G  1 loop 

├─live-rw        253:0    0     8G  0 dm   /

└─live-osimg-min 253:1    0     8G  1 dm   

loop4              7:4    0   512M  0 loop 

└─live-rw        253:0    0     8G  0 dm   /

and also:

[liveuser@localhost ~]$ sudo fdisk -l



Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors

Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes

I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

Disk label type: dos

Disk identifier: 0x712f758b



   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

/dev/sda1               1   976766975   488383487+  ee  GPT

Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.



Disk /dev/sdb: 32.0 GB, 32017047552 bytes, 62533296 sectors

Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

Disk label type: dos

Disk identifier: 0x2f7c2cab



   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

/dev/sdb1               1  4294967295  2147483647+  ee  GPT



Disk /dev/sdc: 16.0 GB, 16008609792 bytes, 31266816 sectors

Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

Disk label type: dos

Disk identifier: 0x00000000



   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

/dev/sdc1   *          32    31266815    15633392    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)



Disk /dev/mapper/live-rw: 8589 MB, 8589934592 bytes, 16777216 sectors

Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes



Disk /dev/mapper/live-osimg-min: 8589 MB, 8589934592 bytes, 16777216 sectors

Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

I've also been trying other live distributions and I get the following error when I attempt to browse to the "OS" disk on a Linux Mint live disc (I haven't checked to see whether I get the same error on the Fedora live disc):

Error mounting /dev/sda4 at /media/mint/OS: Command-line `mount -t "ntfs" -o "uhelper=udisks2,nodev,nosuid,uid=999,gid=999,dmask=0077,fmask=0177" "/dev/sda4" "/media/mint/OS"' exited with non-zero exit status 14: The disk contains an unclean file system (0, 0).

Metadata kept in Windows cache, refused to mount.

Failed to mount '/dev/sda4': Operation not permitted

The NTFS partition is in an unsafe state. Please resume and shutdown

Windows fully (no hibernation or fast restarting), or mount the volume

read-only with the 'ro' mount option.

This is how the disk manager looks in Windows 8:

Any suggestions?

This may be related.

I don't have a GPT disk so this is just a guess, but that may be why fdisk has a problem -- it did not support GPT until last year. However, I notice that is dated several months after the last stable util-linux (the source package which includes fdisk), 2.21, which is the fdisk here on my fedora 17 system. You can check this with fdisk -v.

That post seems to refer to a version 2.3.1 which is not available? The last branch on git looks like 2.23.

So most likely your fdisk does not support GPT, and the version which does is apparently not ready for public consumption. However, gdisk, "an fdisk like partitioning tool for GPT disks" is available in the fedora repos (in fact, it is already on my system, so perhaps it is part of a base install). If you can use that from a live CD, you can set up the partitions yourself and tell the installer to skip that step.

Googling around, it seems that F19 should support a GPT install, but some people have had problems...