On Sun, 25 Sept 2022 at 04:03, Ray Andrews <rayandr...@eastlink.ca> wrote:
> ... I get as far as partitioning and although the disk (sdb) is > already partitioned and formatted and working fine, it seemed to be > impossible to just leave things as they were and install to the existing > partitions, it kept complaining that a necessary step was not completed. > Erasing the partitions (overwrite with zeros) didn't help. I couldn't > figure out how to make it work so backed up and selected 'use whole disk'. Hi Ray, I always install to existing partitions, so it is definitely possible. Debian is very flexible. There are countless installation methods and options and variations. And they mostly work. They are designed to be powerful and flexible, but sometimes there is a learning curve. This is great for people who aren't confused by them, but it makes it hard to answer questions like yours. Unless you describe exactly every step, we don't know exactly what you saw or did. And we understand that providing such information isn't easy for you, either. The installation guide is here: https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch06s03.en.html#di-partition If I was to take a guess based on just the above paragraph ... "it kept complaining that a necessary step was not completed" sounds like you did not specify appropriate values for "use as" and "mount point". I'm guessing that you would likely require 'use as' = "ext4 journalling file system" and 'mount point' = "/". If that was the situation, the installer won't proceed because it won't touch partitions that have not been specified to "use as", and it cannot install Debian until it is told where you want the root filesystem ("/"). I have only ever used the installer in expert mode (that just means more questions have to be answered), so I'm not experienced with how it behaves in the simpler modes. I guess manual partitioning is the same in both, if available. I have never used the GUI installer. > Why couldn't I use existing, functioning ext4 partitions? You definitely can. But you have to also specify somewhere for the new installation to go, using the above method. You might find the below video helpful for overview. Although I don't necessarily agree with every detail, it might provide context if you have any further questions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMCFQwgtN-g If you have further questions after reading the documentation, the more specific you can make the question, so that we can exactly reproduce your situation, the easier it is for volunteers with limited time to answer you.
