As slackware is booting up it gives me a message saying the DMA on my HD has been turned off and this will slow the fsck process. What the heck is a dma, how can it be turned on, and will this speed bootup?

DMA will speed up lots of things, somehow I managed to turn if off on one of my drives once and the slowdown was insane I almost cried. As root, run this and post the output, it should fix the problem:

thats what I get when I do this (hdc is my harddrive since its SATA drive)

Well I can tell you the problem but I can't tell you how to fix it because I don't know anything about SATA drives or newer motherboard and which modules they use but never fear, knowing this place, someone will be along soon who can help.

For now, the problem is you don't have the correct module loaded for your hardware. Did you compile your own kernel? Post some more hardware details and we'll figure out what modules you need loaded. Does hotplug load modules at boot for you?

Actually hotplug modules sometimes gives errors. I will check on next reboot for sure. I am using a standard precompiled kernel: 2.4.29

Trying to install Slackware 10.1 onto my primary slave.

Soyo KT266A (on board audio and lan)
AMD Athlon 1.2 GHZ Athlon XP
IBM 125 GB HD-Primary Slave-Linux, hopefully :?)
Western Digital 160 GB-Primary Master (Windoze)
40 GB Maxtor (personal files)
1.5 gb Corsair PC 2100
Deck Fire kyb/dvorak layout-mapping this in slack was easy! -:0) still needs a few tweaks


The Maxtor is on a raid channel but I shorted the jumper so its NOT raid,
at least in windoze. I wanted to seperate the operating systems; i REALLY dont want them on the same drive. Will they see each other? I have GoBack installed on the primary master. and it does not like drives without it; I am getting

/dev/hdb (primary slave)

hdb dma error
hdb dma timeout (A BUNCH OF READABLE TEXT FOLLOWS THIS ERROR)but i dont know what it is.

I dont see any bios settings to turn dma on/off.
Also I wanted 4 partitions (/root, /swap, /user, /boot)
I set the first partion but dont know/understand
how you calculate the space for the rest

This is my first try with linux. All info is welcome; also I got the
Slack Essentials 2nd Edition, feel free to refer me to it instead of
typing a bunch.

Thx in advance.
dyn0

Just make / as a primary parition and then make a bunch of logicial partitions for anything you want, like /usr /home /root /etc , etc. It's definently not necessary to make the separate paritions, you only need to have a / parition. Generally if something has a 'bunch of stuff on it' then it should be a separate partition just for safety.

For example if you have like 200 users on your system you prolly want to make /home a separate partition and/or if you are running a webserver with much data being 'served up' then you should make /var a separate partition.

I usually use the program cfdisk to do the actual partitioning, and its included on the first slackware CD-ROM. Remember the first 4 partitions are reserved for primary so any logicial will start at position 5.

Ex.

/dev/hda1 /
/dev/hda5 /home
/dev/hda6 /usr

I still haven't figured out my dma problem, but its just a minor startup annoyance for me and everything still works fine. I hope this info will help you out.

Ok, thanks for the info. you only need /; but u also need at least swap, right?
I am just setting it up on my pc, no other users.

And can you tell me what size the partitions should be?

Thanxs again.
Dyn0

Yeah, you need a swap partition. To do this just make a logicial parition as normal and then change the 'format' to 'linux swap' (I think its option 83 or 82 in cfdisk). After that just write changes to disk and reboot. Then slackware setup will detect that parition as swap space and set it for you basically automatically.

As for how large it should be that depends on how much system RAM you have. Swap space isn't as important as it used to be since today's PCs have large amounts of RAM. The traditional advice was 2xRAM, but that isn't necessary anymore although it doesn't hurt anything. If you have 512mb or more RAM then you prolly should have at least 256mb or 512mb swap. If you have below 256mb you will need at least 512mb. I have a system with 1024mb ram and never use my swap space (i have watched monitoring tools of its activity) but you should still have 256mb or so just so the kernel doesn't ever 'get confused'. Ha.

Bottom line is you prolly won't use it, but do have some. Get at least 256mb of it.

ok. thanks Servnov. Back to the setup i go.

dyn0

Hello again. I was doing a google and accidentally found my own post.lol.
I am trying to install slack 10.1; now i get a dcop server error when i go into KDE. I am a SUPERnoob when it comes to linux. I have seen a lot of posts on this error but no real answers. I am beggining to think it does not like my onboard lan. Thanks in advance.

Soyo KT266A (on board audio and lan)
AMD Athlon 1.2 GHZ Athlon XP
IBM 125 GB HD-Primary Slave-Linux, hopefully :?)
Western Digital 160 GB-Primary Master (Windoze)
40 GB Maxtor (personal files)
1.5 gb Corsair PC 2100
Deck Fire kyb/dvorak layout-mapping this in slack was easy! -:0) still needs a few tweaks

here is what it says after hardwear detectiion<<<
XWindow 6.8.1
Linux 2.4.29
Xprotocol v.11 REV 0 REL 6.8.1
Logfile: "/var/log/xorg.0.log"
using: "/etc/11/xorg.conf"
could not init font path element
/usr/x11R6/lib/x11/fonts/cid
\\\\\REMOVING FROM LIST//////
XSET:bad font element#58
KDE: /home/dyn0myt3/.DCOPServer/slackdragon_0 .no such file or directory.
self test fail/connection refused

then i EXIT and it kickx me back to my dyn0myt3 or root; 4get which ??
i have got
root@/slackware and dyn0myt3 with: addusr

thanks again. its bein a B but hopfully i can get it right. i have the 4disk w/the book.
im going to reinstall but i have feeling this will still apply; it worked flawlessly the 1st time-what did i do? i had to reinstall windows cuz i LINUXED its partition-oops-this like my 20th install/got my moneys worth on them disks<