Hi,

I'm facing a problem when trying to add a new IDE harddrive to the mandrake 9 system. The drive is a 120GB which works with windows so the drive is working.

BIOS detect the drive correctly in secondary master, and it is detected as hdc. However, fstab cannot find hdc. Previously it was a cdrom as secondary master, and it seems that the system got confused. I have searched around and found others having the same problems but no solution

In the message log using dmesg, I'm getting a end_request error

ide_setup: hdc=ide-scsi
..
Partition check:
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0: p1 p2 < p5 p6 p7 p8 >
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0: p1
hdc:<6>end_request: I/O error, cmd 0 dev 16:00 (hdc), sector 0
end_request: I/O error, cmd 0 dev 16:00 (hdc), sector 1
end_request: I/O error, cmd 0 dev 16:00 (hdc), sector 2

In the lilo.conf, I removed the line append="dev..", and restarted lilo but no help

boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
default="linux"
keytable=/boot/us.klt
prompt
nowarn
timeout=100
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux"
root=/dev/hda1
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=mount hdc=ide-scsi acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda5 splash=silent"
vga=788
read-only


FStab file

/dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /home ext3 defaults 1 2
none /mnt/cdrom supermount dev=/dev/scd0,fs=auto,ro,--,iocharset=utf8 0 0
none /mnt/hd supermount dev=/dev/hdd1,fs=ext2:vfat,--,kudzu,iocharset=utf8 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda8 /tmp ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda6 /usr ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda7 /var ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda5 swap swap defaults 0 0


I guess I should need to edit fstab but I'm unsure how as I'm pretty new to linux. I remove the line "none /mnt/cdrom.." but again no go.

I'm not even seeing an entry for hdc in your fstab...

Add this?

/dev/hdc1 /mnt/hdc1 ext3 defaults 0 0

Replace ext3 with the FS you use on the drive...
and mkdir /mnt/hdc1

Might want to make sure hdc1 is the only partition on the drive. Might want to make sure the drive has been formatted in the first place.

You might want to keep all of the other options but just delete the hdc=ide-scsi part.

Hi Kethinov, there is no partition in the drive. I delete the parition in windows first. An mounting error occurs with the line "/dev/hdc1 /mnt.."

I noticed something in the boot log, wonder if this is causing the problem?

Nope, doesn't work.

The setup log has this entry

My fault...

You need to rerun lilo for the change to take effect.

I did rerun lilo. It's just typing "lilo", right? No effect, the log still has the line hdc=ide_scsi. This is my entire lilo.conf

upz

I assume lilo runs without errors?

Just as an exercise boot off the install CD to rescue mode or maybe a live CD if you have one and see if you can access the new hard drive. You say it isn't partitioned so use fdisk or cfdisk and create a partition. Then go and and create a filesystem too.

I can't fdisk as /dev/hdc is not seen. Also, the system files are spread across the 3 harddisk so I can only install on secondary master. I cannot install both the cdrom and the new hard disk at the same time

Oh.... BTW what are the settings of the motherboard BIOS for hdc? Is it set for auto?

I got the solution in another forum. My system doesn't have a floppy drive and the lilo.conf has one entry for floppy boot. So it always encounter an error and will not update the lilo.conf unless I remove that entry. Thanks for your help!