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Unable to create swap partition

Posted: Fri Oct 08, 2004 2:47 am
by yoink00
Hi,

I've been trying to install GentooX MCE...

I'm attempting to install it on a Friendtech DreamX-733 with a 120GB HDD...

When I booted up the box the initial screen was messed up I hit 'A' anyway and the installation continued... It got to the point where I needed to insert the GentooX disk or reinsert the MCE disk... when it rebooted it wouldn't recognise the disk so I rebooted again... it then skipped the initial blue screen (I couldn't see what was on it) and goes straight to try and install.

When the Linux boot stuff flashes past it complains of some disk error (it goes past way too quickly to see what's going on)... It thens tries to format the disk at which point it complains it's "Unable to create swap partition".

What the heck am I doing wrong?

Stu

Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2004 7:25 pm
by ShALLaX
Hmm, that sounds rather odd. What BIOS are you booting from? Do you know what version of Xbox it is?

Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2004 8:30 pm
by yoink00
The BIOS was whatever was on the DreamX when I received it...

It's a v1.6 XBox...

I've been investigating the problem and it seems that it's having some problem with my HDD, but the normal XBox dashboard has no such problem... I'm currently attempting to disable DMA and see if that helps...

If you've got a better idea let me know :-)

Stu

Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2004 11:59 pm
by ShALLaX
1.6... that would be why ;)

MCE is not v1.6 compliant at all, and it wont be until I get Gentoox running properly on v1.6s (i.e. overscan correction etc)... which may be never since MS arent going to hand us the specs for the encoder any time soon... heh.

Posted: Sun Oct 10, 2004 3:31 am
by yoink00
Oh... Is there an easy way to reverse out of what I've done? It seems to only want to read from the MCE disk.

Thank,

Stu

Posted: Sun Oct 10, 2004 7:59 am
by nobspangle
if you boot the MCE disc you should be able to hit ctrl+C on your keyboard to kill the install and then reflash your bios with raincoat. Then you just need to format your F drive and you'll be back to how you were. Instructions for raincoat are in a tutorial on the main Gentoox site.

Or failing that I see Shallax has a new rescue CD, that includes a reflashing tool, out.

Posted: Sun Oct 10, 2004 9:27 am
by ShALLaX
You can now use Resctoox.

Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2004 3:13 pm
by jcouzens
This happens to me and I am using two separate x-box 1.0 versions with 6GB and 10GB drives respectively. The 8GB one gives me the swap error. The 10GB one gives me an "unable to create root partition" error. I popped in a 20GB drive and then the installer worked fine. So it looks like the MCE installer is reliant upon a large enough disk drive to have an F:\ drive appear or something along those lines. Tried this on both of my xboxes and they installe fine as long as the drive is at least 20GB (I had nothing smaller other than the stock drives).

8GB xbox is using SmartXX with Gentoox Loader 4.6 bios loaded before lauching MCE installer.

10GB xbox is using latest Cromwell before launching MCE installer.

Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2004 3:15 pm
by ShALLaX
Nice work, Sherlock... but did you try reading the manual where it says "YOU MUST HAVE AT LEAST A 20GB HARD DRIVE".....

;)