Slackware 9 Installation Problems
 

I have done Ooogles of Google searching on a Slackware installation guide where they might speak of the problem I have. But no luck...


When I go to boot from disk, I enter root and type cfdisk. When I go to create the partition it says "opened disk read-only - you have no permission to write" I can view the table of partitions (which is currently none), but can't write anything to the disk. Can anyone be of assistance? Is their something in BIOS that I need to configure?

I have had successful experiences w/ RedHat and Mandrake, but Slackwares just giving my problems.

Thanks to anyone who can help.

Matt

Don't give up on slack. slack is my favourite distro and interestingly has been the distro that I can set-up more easily than the other Fedora, RH, Mandrake supposed user-friendly distros.

I tried to using the cfdisk and fdisk and found them a little tricky. I was lazy and used a RH disk to set up my partitions - then once the partitioning was complete just turned off the box and slipped in slack.

Then booted slack and used the existing partitions, but formatted in reiserfs and allocated swap, boots, /home, etc accordingly. Just go slow through that step.The first few times that I installed slack, I ended up installing the OS into the swap! DOOHHHH! Needless to say, the process was restarted not long thereafter.

is it 9 or 9.1.
If it's just 9 you should try and get 9.1, I had a ton of problems with 9.

I don't actually understand your problem because with cfdisk I have only had the problem of the table being corrupted (thanks windows).

Tell us if you can create the partitions with another program. If you don't have something else then you probably need to make a linux boot disk which should have fdisk on it.

good luck.

I don't fully understand my problem either. The hard disk I am using has no partitions, nothing, blank. I have never had this issue before.

I do have Slackware 9.0. I'm going to get the ISOs for 9.1 and see how that works out. I'm going to also browse my BIOS and see if there is anything I can change to where I can take the "write" protection off. The thing is, I took out slack and put in RH and it started the installation process just fine. So, I'll see.

I don't want to give up on Slackware either, I hate giving up on computer problems. :mad:

I also tried on different HDD and it came up w/ the same problem, the read and write problem. So I think it might be the BIOS. Also, it's a 20gb hdd and it says it only has like 660 mb of space.

you are trying to fdisk the cddrive try cfdisk /dev/hdc

Disk
 

Been using Slack since 8.1 and had ZERO problems. The individual with 9.0 problems may have had isolated issues. There isn't, or shouldn't be, anything relating to "write-protection" in your BIOS. If that were the case, RH would not be able to install. What boot disk are you using? If you have an IDE system, I use the bare.i root disk. From what you are saying, the drive may be set up wrong in the BIOS - the full 20 gig should be recognized. Is your motherboard capable of handling a 20 gig drive?

Paul

the boot disks should put u to a login prompt. Make sure ur logging in as root, otherwise u might not have write access to the HD. If it isnt properly recognizing the HD size, it could be an old HD, or some HD manufacturers' disks are weird, so u need some floppy to format it correctly. I had that problem with a Western Digital. When u DO get to formatting, try using fdisk .. its not that hard, especially if u have a drive dedicated to Linux. Just type:
fdisk /dev/hda or w/e hdd ur using
n - to add a partition(it'll ask u for the starting cylinder; accept the default; then it'll ask for ending cylinder or size .. use +sizeM .. for example 2GB = +2048M)
u need to make at least 2 partitions, a swap, and a normal one (if u want u can make separate partitions for /home and /usr)
1. Make the swap partition (use 't' to change the type of partition (it will list codes, then change code to appropriate one for swap))
2. Make ur other partition(s).
3. Then the setup should ask for the targets for each partition. If you correctly changed the type of the first partition u made, it should show that one for the swap target. The rest is easy.

look for an option "virus protection" in your bios, this option prevents the mbr to be overwritten. however if redhat can partition your disk, this isn't the problem i guess...

Sounds to me like its trying to access your cdrom

that is what I said.

I'll third that motion... :)

You're looking at your CDROM drive. If you are trying to open /dev/hda for partitioning you may want to just open each device up to /dev/hdh.

I saw the same thing when installing on my motherboard (Gigabyte GA-7VAXP). Because my hard drives are connected to the IDE RAID controller the device names for my hard drives start at /dev/hde.

Also if you are using the same type of IDE controller as mine (Promise PDC20276) and you have your channels set to ATA instead of RAID then you will need a custom boot disk for your drives to be seen. If you are using the same controller as I am, you can get that bootdisk at my site here:
Howto.cc

some computers are just set wierd. I don't have raid and just have a normal hardisk and a ide cd/rw. They are set to hda=cdrw hdc=hardrive. You main drive should be hda,hdc,hde. the ones in between are slaves usually.

I think Crazy Travis is right. When you are in cfdisk, does the total size of all partitions match your HD, or is it in the neighborhood of 650Mg?

There's nothing in BIOS that blocks writing to a hard disk, as that would pretty much defeat the purpose of the hard disk.

The 2 comments that I'd want to make are that with cfdisk, it's always best to issue the command with the exact device fully specified, ie: cfdisk /dev/hdb (or whatever) Second of all, once you've set up your partitions the way you want, be sure to Write them, don't just Quit, with the assumption that your changes will be saved. You have to explicitly write them.

Good luck with it, it sounds like you are pretty close. Slack totally rocks and I don't think you'll be sorry with your choice. -- J.W.

You could have this solved by now though using your RH disks to partition and format! Not an ideal solution, but it would save your time for other fun such as setting up fluxbox!