I'm trying to do the DVD install of Fedora core 8 onto a Toshiba Tecra A9 laptop. I managed to get past the /sbin/loader hang with "nohz=no nolapci" added to the boot line. But I didn't get much further. When it's time to partition the disk, the installer can't find any disks to install on. This laptop has a 60meg windows (XP) partition, and over 90 megs of unallocated space. I can't see why it can't find the unallocated space to install onto. It doesn't seem to find the hard disk at all.

I'm now going to try an ubuntu installation to see if that works.

Any hints for Fedora? I would like to install FC8 then put Planet CCRMA over the top of it.

Hopefully you ment 60 gigabytes and 90 gigabytes, not megabytes ('meg') ..or if you did mean megs, I'd like to hear how you managed to fit XP into 60MB

Well, the only sane reason I can come up with is that it doesn't detect the disk, because there is no software drivers (kernel module) to know how to work with the piece of hardware. I thought those situations were rare or non-existent, but actually bumped into one some two years ago with a laptop..I don't remember whether it was Dell, IBM or what, but it had a disk which Fedora Core didn't understand back then (it asked me to insert a driver floppy, which I didn't have).

Possible solution..well, if the setup asks you for drivers, you can try to get them (if they exist for your situation) and get the installer detect the disk that way, or you can try if some Linux flavour understands the harddisk (maybe Knoppix is a good start; a live-cd with such a huge kernel that it should support most hardware), or just wait and wonder. A web search for linux drivers + the harddisk's make and model might shed some light on the matter too..

Thanks. I presumed that I was doing something wrong rather than the hard disk not being handled. I previously had Linux on an older model Tecra, and that worked. There are very few links found by the search "toshiba tecra a9" "linux", and no mention of the problem. But the page in the installation progress where you're supposed to choose partitions to install to mentions no disks, and the pulldown menu gives me no options.

I'm burning Ubuntu as I type, and will try an install of that next. Knoppix is also a good choice which I will give a true.

Yes, I did mean 60 gigs and 90 gigs.

Why don't you try the Fedora 8 Live CD first? I can't see a reason to download a DVD if all desired packages can be loaded in their latest version from the repositories......
If the live CD can see/mount the drive (I had a similar problem with FC7, DVD didn't see the drive but KDE live did) you will be able to install.

Juergen

I'm running Ubuntu from live-CD at the moment. It sees the two drives as SCSI drives, it appears.

In /proc/scsi/scsi I find two drives. One being the TEAC CD-ROM, the other being a Hitachi HT554161, Rev: SB40, SCSI revision 85.

So why wouldn't Fedora find the Hitachi drive?

I'll try the live DVD for Fedora next.

The Fedora 8 live CD has found the hard drive on /dev/sda, and is currently installing itself onto the free space on that drive.

Please Pay Attention To:
Linux versions with GUI technology will be completely installed on Tecra A9 because I have experienced that for DELL INSPIRON 6400.First you Should know that the storage media version for A9 is SATA that has special driver called Yastor wich may not be provided for Linux in the other words it's not a executable format for Linux because .exe file types are not known for and not executable in Linux media framework.Second that Linux has a special partitioning that is completely different with Windows.First you must backup all your data on your computer and then let the installation wizard delete al your partitions on your computer and creates new partitions with Linux file system technology(swap,ext2,ext3 and...),the installation will be successful for Open SUSe and Mandriva 2008 and 2009.But there is a very huge problem that after you installed Linux there are no Linux drivers supporting Tecra A9.PLEASE HELP ME!