x86: Vista Multiboot Installation Might Fail (6598208)

Windows Vista fdisk program has a new approach to allocation of extra sectors on a disk drive. Vista allocates space in multiples of 2048 sectors. This change affects the Developer 9/07 multibooting process for some laptops that have Vista pre-installed. The fdisk command reports errors during installation while reading the existing partition table.

While installing the Developer 9/07 release on a system that has Windows Vista, one of the following two failures might occur:

• Install might fail with the following error message:

  Not enough free space

• fdisk might fail with the following error message:

  fdisk: Cannot Create partition table

Confirm that the problem exists by using the following command:

fdisk -d <device>

For example:

# fdisk -d c0d0p0
  Physical Geometry:
    cylinders[30400] heads[255] sectors[63]
    sector size[512] blocks[488376000] mbytes[896]
  Virtual (HBA) Geometry:
    cylinders[30400] heads[255] sectors[63]
    sector size[512] blocks[488376000] mbytes[896]
  Partition Table Entry Values:
  SYSID  ACT   BHEAD  BSECT  BEGCYL  EHEAD  ESECT  ENDCYL  RELSECT  NUMSECT
  191    128   0      1      1       254    63     1023    16065    488359935
  100    0     0      0      0       0      0      0       100      100   
  100    0     0      0      0       0      0      0       100      100  
  100    0     0      0      0       0      0      0       100      100 

The maximum disk capacity is shown in the blocks as 488376000. The highest sector allocated is calculated from the partition table 16065 + 488359935 which is 488376000. If the highest sector allocated is greater than the disk capacity then the problem exists.

If Solaris is not installed on this system, you can boot using the install CD or DVD and early in the install process select the option to exit to shell.

Workaround: Create a recovery CD of the affected hard disk partitions. Perform the following steps:

1. Boot Windows Vista.

2. Shrink the last partition. Go to Windows -> Control Panel -> System Maintenance -> Administrative Tools -> Create and format hard disk partitions.

3. Right-click on the last partition on the right and select Shrink Volume. Shrink the volume by about 9 Mbytes.

   Given the difference between the Vista fdisk calculations and the Solaris installer fdisk calculations, an adjustment of 9 MBytes to the existing size of the last Vista partition will resolve the Solaris installer errors.

4. Reboot the system and install the Solaris OS.