Issues installing : Failed to partition disk because lack of free space or too small(WTF)

  • Yeaaaaaaaaaaa. I'm not sure what the deal is. It shouldn't be a compatibility issue with any of the hardware I have in this machine.


    Supermicro X10 board, I've tried the install with my HBA unplugged. i've tried different USB drives... just doesn't make sense.

    I've been testing OMV with a bunch of different hardware the last month using OMV 4.1.3.


    No issues writing the installation files on any combination of hardware, EXCEPT a Supermicro board (X9DBL-iF) with a USB Flash drive as the installation target. For that, I get the exact same error message as you. I've tried this with multiple flash drives on both the internal USB "A" and on the back I/O, always the same "failed to partition..." error.


    I haven't tried OMV3.x on it, but was able to install 4.1.3 onto an SSD.

  • I happen to have some 1tb WD RE's laying around. I have 5x 250gb SSD's in my server right now but sadly that is in use, I'm using it for some testing at work. Otherwise I'd throw an SSD in there and just install on that.


    The only problem is that my HDD bays are maxed out in my Fractal Design case, I'd almost HAVE to do an SSD haha

    Motherboard : SuperMicro X10SLL-F | i3-4170 @ 3.7ghz | 32gb ECC RAM
    PSU: EVGA 500w
    Case: Fractal Design Define R5
    Controller : Dell H310 flashed with IT Mode Firmware
    DATA: 8x3TB

  • Solution : Install to a actual drive via SATA port instead of installing to USB


    Kinda shit but whatever. it works now.

    Motherboard : SuperMicro X10SLL-F | i3-4170 @ 3.7ghz | 32gb ECC RAM
    PSU: EVGA 500w
    Case: Fractal Design Define R5
    Controller : Dell H310 flashed with IT Mode Firmware
    DATA: 8x3TB

  • Hi I am having same issue too, tried installing on a 8GB USB 2.0 thumbdrive and 64GB USB 3.0 thumbdrive from a 8GB USB 2.0 thumbdrive or a 16GB USB 3.0 thumbdrive of various brands


    Sounds like either installing to a SSD/HDD or doing the Netinst method may be the only workaround.


    Let me see if I can get the Netinst method to work since I have to install OMV onto a thumbdrive as I have no more HDDs left


    Alternatively I can try the DVD method; apparently the installer USB thinks that it is a DVD based on the options I see if you exit some parts of the installer but not entirely (I am seeing something about ejecting the DVD...?!)


    Now if only I can find a spare DVD in the first place!

  • Tested with a DVD and an USB BD drive, it worked with a SATA 1TB HDD and the aforementioned 64GB USB 3 thumbdrive (which I noticed is identified as a pSSD in Parted Magic). Same error message is seen for the 8 GB and 16 GB thumbdrives.


    I noticed it indeed creates a swap-file partition that is as big as the amount of RAM on the system and that on the HDD, as much as 16GB is used for OMV files alone while only 1.5 GB is used on the thumbdrive.


    I can't workaround for the smaller thumbdrives though; not even transferring their files or copying the partitions from known working installations.


    Are all these intended as design?

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Not sure what hardware you are on. Old Dell and maybe some other servers had an "os install" setting in the bios. This showed the os install only 256MB of ram. Never had to use it but it drove me crazy once. Always wondered why they would do that but maybe you found out why. Anyway maybe you could remove as much ram as you can.


    Or do a debian minimal install and partition the diskd the way you want. Then install omv.

  • Not sure what hardware you are on. Old Dell and maybe some other servers had an "os install" setting in the bios. This showed the os install only 256MB of ram. Never had to use it but it drove me crazy once. Always wondered why they would do that but maybe you found out why. Anyway maybe you could remove as much ram as you can.


    Or do a debian minimal install and partition the diskd the way you want. Then install omv.


    I an using consumer grade Z77/Z68 boards that have no such issues during OMV3 so I dont think that was the cause of this problem


    I will try the RAM removal idea first then

  • I tried the RAM removal idea, it works!


    I left only one stick of 4GB RAM and could get OMV4 to install onto the 8GB USB stick


    I may not use it after all though since I realised that using the flashmemory plugin meant that logs would be in RAM until restart/shutdown; this may make diagnosis of problems harder down the road

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    I may not use it after all though since I realised that using the flashmemory plugin meant that logs would be in RAM until restart/shutdown; this may make diagnosis of problems harder down the road

    You could setup a scheduled job to run the folder2ram -syncall tag to write the contents in ram to files.

    omv 7.0.4-2 sandworm | 64 bit | 6.5 proxmox kernel

    plugins :: omvextrasorg 7.0 | kvm 7.0.10 | compose 7.1.2 | k8s 7.0-6 | cputemp 7.0 | mergerfs 7.0.3


    omv-extras.org plugins source code and issue tracker - github


    Please try ctrl-shift-R and read this before posting a question.

    Please put your OMV system details in your signature.
    Please don't PM for support... Too many PMs!

  • You could setup a scheduled job to run the folder2ram -syncall tag to write the contents in ram to files.


    Hmm sounds like a good idea but as a side question, will there be any performance hit if my OMV boot disk is also used for VirtualBox?


    Idea is that if there is no performance hit, I will prefer to just stick with what I am doing right now, which is to simply partition one HDD for OMV boot and data usage instead of using an USB for OMV boot only (all these things I did in this thread are just for testing before I make the jump to OMV4)

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    will there be any performance hit if my OMV boot disk is also used for VirtualBox?

    Depends on what you use OMV for and what the virtualbox guest(s) are doing.

    omv 7.0.4-2 sandworm | 64 bit | 6.5 proxmox kernel

    plugins :: omvextrasorg 7.0 | kvm 7.0.10 | compose 7.1.2 | k8s 7.0-6 | cputemp 7.0 | mergerfs 7.0.3


    omv-extras.org plugins source code and issue tracker - github


    Please try ctrl-shift-R and read this before posting a question.

    Please put your OMV system details in your signature.
    Please don't PM for support... Too many PMs!

  • Depends on what you use OMV for and what the virtualbox guest(s) are doing.


    I am using OMV as my NAS (SnapRAID or ZFS, file server (i.e. SMB), NextCloud, VirtualBox, Plex (still deciding))


    VirtualBox guests are going to be development servers for my websites (and maybe NextCloud too?)


    I am going to try using one HDD for OMV boot and these VMs first and then play by ear; it seems that it is not a good idea in general to run OSes on USB drives

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    VirtualBox guests are going to be development servers for my websites (and maybe NextCloud too?)

    web servers are generally low load. So, I would think you could run these on your OS disk.


    it seems that it is not a good idea in general to run OSes on USB drives

    I have a couple of servers running on USB drives. No issues here.

    omv 7.0.4-2 sandworm | 64 bit | 6.5 proxmox kernel

    plugins :: omvextrasorg 7.0 | kvm 7.0.10 | compose 7.1.2 | k8s 7.0-6 | cputemp 7.0 | mergerfs 7.0.3


    omv-extras.org plugins source code and issue tracker - github


    Please try ctrl-shift-R and read this before posting a question.

    Please put your OMV system details in your signature.
    Please don't PM for support... Too many PMs!

  • I had the same problem... It's not OpenMediaVault, it's Debian.
    I tried to install Debian 9.8 from scratch, same error.
    Like Darkarn said the guilty is the amount of ram.
    I have 16GB and Debian tries to configure a swap partition of the same size, obviously it can not fit in a 8 or 16GB stick.
    I removed 3 modules, and left just one (4GB) and both Debian 9.8 and OMV4 could install on USB flash 8GB flawless.
    Thank you very much Darkarn to have pointed us on the right direction. Very smart of you! I was getting crazy for this error.

  • You can also write manual partition tables without swap. The swap space in the size of the memory is needed for suspend mode, if you dont need it just format a root fs in ext as / and if you install gpt (uefi) another partition as /boot/

  • Cheers this really bugged me today.


    Proxmox tried to do a fresh install 4 times, and was failing after I bumped my ram up, kept erroring on 8Gb disk with 8Gb RAM.


    Upped the drive to 10Gb and now I stuck with just 2 gb usable so will have to repartition with gparted, I suppose, as I've hit the limit of the disk and can't install docker even.

Jetzt mitmachen!

Sie haben noch kein Benutzerkonto auf unserer Seite? Registrieren Sie sich kostenlos und nehmen Sie an unserer Community teil!