Complete Newbie Can't find the harddrive to load DSL
 

Have for several hours been trying to load Dam Small Linux as an Hard Drive install on an Older computer -a Compaq Deskpro En 600mHz with a 20gig Hardive and 129megs of ram - Boots From CD and runs DSL fine but cant save any settings and so have to reset everything each time. so wanting to load it to hard disk - Boots with a Floppy with Freedos on it and through Fdisk on a floppy boot can see the hard drive it is freshly wiped and formatted as a single volume using the whole disk as one Primary volume - also tried it with it wiped and unformatted - Start DLS from a Cd and is up and running in minutes but can't with any certainty ( as I do not know what I am doing in Linux ) see the Hard drive = and when I do the Hard drive install option and assume it is
HDA0 it tests the drive then says someing about blocks and spits the dummy - trying to load on HDA1 or HDA2 comes back with a physical drives not found message - Shove a windows 2000 cd in and it finds the Hard drive and happily loads onto it without a Hitch ! what am I doing wrong - been into the Bios and changed every setting I can find for the hard drive - LBA - etc all make no difference - not sure looking in right dirrection and so getting disalusioned with Linux very early on - eventual aim is to load a working hard disk version of UBUNTU on this machine once have put some more ram in it ( in post ) so far have not managed to do a single thing in linux apart from web surf and I am sure its good for more than that !!

What is listed when you open the terminal from the running live CD and enter "sudo cfdisk"?

From cfdisk create a swap partition (2x RAM?) and a linux partition. Note the designation of your swap and Linux partitions (hda1; hda2?).
EDIT: You need to make the partition types "swap" and "linux".

When the hard drive installer starts tell it the designation of the Linux partition.

Thanks for that on line with the machine now "Sudo cfdisk" generates the error messages
[FATAL ERROR:Bad primary partition 0: Partition ends Before Sector O
Press any key to exit cfdisk ]

not sure what that means and what tool to use to correct it - using MSDOS based tools( fdisk etc ) harddrive formats and deformats freely and is accessable without apparent errors for loading OS like windows 2000

Hi,

And welcome to LQ!


And what do you get from "fdisk -l" instead of cfdisk?


Cheers,
Tink

Thanks for your interest fdisk -l
gives the message
[Cannot open /dev/sda
Cannot open /dev/hdb
DSL@box:$ ]

which I am sure means something - suspect it means system is not able to access or find the harddrive or the SDA what ever that is ?

Hmm ... out of curiosity: which version of DSL are
you using, and can a ubuntu live-CD see the device?


Cheers,
Tink

P.S.: Forgive my curiosity, where in Godzone are you? :}

NO Problem in being Curious - Currently Sat In central Taupo overlooking the Lake in Central North island . Sunny calm but cool winters day with snow on the distant mountains -

Ubuntu live Cd will not boot or to be more accurate will not load gets to the point of playing a fractured ubuntu " Tune " then stalls for many many hours at a beige screen with green thin lines running up and down - Doing some research on internet seems that 256megs of ram is needed to run it and only have 129 ( have another 256 in the post on it way to me nown - so may be an otion in a few days )

THe DSL version I am running! ( and that is what I am doing this on ) not sure where to find out that infor - only down loaded it from web site a few days ago and was the latest stable then - on desk top says Linu 2.4.31 on I686 but I suspect that is the kernals and not the distributions details
where do I look ??

Mark

Lovely :} ...

Good point - Ubunutu isn't too good with little RAM. :/

Didn't think of that.


I don't use DSL myself at all - but most distro's will have
a file in /etc that has version or release in the name.


Cheers,
Tink

Have found the /etc directory and has lots and lots of files in it none for which suggest that they contain the information and not knowing name of file or how to open it is challenging - however looking on help pages came across "uname -a" terminal function which reports
[Linux box 2.4.31 #6 SMP Fri Oct 21 15:15:54 EDT 2005 i686 unknown]
uname -v ( which I beleive reports version gives
#6 SMP Fri Oct 21 15:15:54 EDT 2005

will wait on new memory and try " Ubuntu"

Thanks


if that helps ?

I have an older 3.x version of DSL right now. At the DSL site it seems they have both a 3.x and 4.x going right now?

From the version I have I can open a "DSL System Stats" from the right click menu on the desktop System -> System Stats (or click the "DSLpanel" icon and then the System Stats button). It lists the DSL version.
From System -> Mount Tool I get a strange "mount tool". Clicking on the top button goes through available drives. Clicking on the second button changes the status between unmounted and mounted.
These tools could be different on your newer version.

A post on the DSL Forum discusses a similar partition issue.

Among the suggestions try the more proper "sudo cfdisk /dev/hda"; or "sudo cfdisk -z /dev/hda" to ignore the partition table.

Run the hard drive manufacturer's drive utility if you find you need to rule out the status of the hard drive itself.

EDIT: I might as well mention that the Ultimate Boot CD has hard disk tools as well as lots of other stuff.

Thanks have found the feature " system stats" and can report that it is
dsl-4.2.5 Tue May 13 19:54:34 2008 - so suspect its a recent one

Also have found the hard drive !!! - it is [hdb1] not the expected [hda0 hda1 or hda2] which seems a mystery to me as there is only one hard drive - But have read that COmpaqs can be odd - have managed to load it and get it to accept lilo as the boot loader would not work with Grub - not sure of the difference but any way now have a working DSL booting from the hard drive even if it is on a second hard drive ( in a single hard drive system ) Only thing I now have to sort out is how to sve settings ( back up - they call it ) in DSL on exit ?

Thanks Mark

Linux finds the primary master as /dev/hda; the primary slave as /dev/hdb; the secondary master as /dev/hdc; and the secondary slave as /dev/hdd.
Your hard drive ribbon cable is plugged into the slot for the primary slave.
No reason to attempt moving it post install.

Damn Small Linux 4.3 is the newest.

Hope you learn to make DSL useful on that PC.