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While working on one of my server I noticed that there are no partitions listed under "fdisk -l" command. However the machine is working just fine. Wanted to know following things if anyone can help. I executed the command using root account. 

1. What does missing partitions signifies. As everything was working fine. ?
2. How to reproduce such scenario ?

Does it means ,something is wrong with my hardware ? After long google learning I found some cases where /proc/partitions corruption can cause such error. However files under /proc cannot be modified so I cannot simulate the fault ?

Any help, suggestion , similar experiences are welcome ? Any dirty way would also be helpful as I need this simulation for testing.

root@myserver 525>fdisk -l
root@myserver 526>
root@myserver 526>sfdisk -l
root@myserver 527>

monk
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2 Answers2

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It could mean that your partition table is gpt, which is not supported in older versions of fdisk. If you provide the output we could see more.

ddio
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Empty output from fdisk -l typically means you do not have the necessary permissions to access the partition table. Check whether you are really working as root and whether SELinux or some other mechanism for limiting access is active.

Tilman Schmidt
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  • As I earlier mentioned , I am very sure that I am working as root. If possible can you give me some more hint about "other mechanism for limiting access is active" ?? – monk Nov 20 '15 at 11:12
  • There are other Linux security modules besides SELinux. Not knowing which distribution you are using I can only guess what might be active on your server. Container virtualization techniques may also prevent access to the physical devices. For a start, to narrow it down, try running the fdisk command unter strace to see what it tries to access and how it fails. – Tilman Schmidt Nov 20 '15 at 14:31