new slack install boots from fd0, not sda1
 

I recently inherited a Dell Poweredge 2400, 512M, Adaptec SCSI hardware RAID, 4x9GB(RAID 5), dual 933MHz Coppermines. I'm about ready to give up on Slackware and go for a distro that does everything *for* me.

I've done the install a few times, and I can't get the box to boot from the hard drive (/ and /boot are on /dev/sda1). What confuses me (among other things) is that I can boot to the floppy. At the prompt, I enter
mount root=/dev/sda1 ro

...doesn't that just tell it to use the kernel on my hard drive? Or is that booting with a kernel on fd0 and just mounting my drives where my own fstab dictates? If that's the case, why didn't the install just work the time I made the boot disk? Doesn't the bootdisk get made with the same kernel anyway?

I tried recompiling the kernel--which I'm 95% sure I did correctly--but that didn't help. I'm 95% sure because it didn't get any worse either ;)

The only kernel from the install disk that's allowed me to even *see* the hard drives is adaptec.s, so I can't see that I'm running the wrong kernel.

Yes, the bootflag is set on /dev/sda1

I'd really like to get this dual proc box running something besides fdisk and setup; does anyone have any ideas?

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UPDATE: Fixed, see below if you're bored. Still dunno if it was quirky hardware or flaky software, but it was likely my own quirky yet flaky stupidity.

only points to the root directory of your installation and indicates it should be mounted read-only at the beginning in order to make possible a filesystem check if needed. To boot from /dev/sda1 you must configure and install LILO (or other bootloader) to use this partition. I'm not sure what you have done to this moment. Also you must have SCSI support comiled in the kernel, (not as module).

Yeah, I knew that, but I thought the 'mount' tells it to actually use the kernel from the install. Or does that just mean 'remount it read-write after the fsck?' I'm certain it stays mounted r/w, because I could make changes to the files.Sorry, I thought I'd mentioned everything. I've already installed LiLO, and I've tried putting it in the MBR *and* the superblock, although I don't know the nuts & bolts behind the difference. When the install CD asks me which kernel to use, adaptec.s was the only one that allowed me to run fdisk, so I seleted it when setup asked me which kernel to install. Am I wrong to assume that covers the SCSI support?

Thanks for the help, btw.

Fixed. Running.

This is the worst sort of solution I can envision. I don't know what I did, so neither I nor anyone else can learn from my mistake(s). I'm only posting on behalf of anyone who might still be wasting time in an attempt to help me.

I completely wiped the drive and started again (which I had already tried*) .
I don't believe I chose a different combination of kernel/apps/daemons/etc** this time.

I used official slack 10 ISOs for the install (2.4.26) and haven't yet recompiled the (2.6.9) kernel for SMP. I'm tempted to leave it alone, as tired as I am of this machine, but I've already surpassed all previous points of failure as none even got me AFA the LiLO menu.

Thanks to iZvi for the help, and if anyone experiencing the same weird problem finds this thread a year from now, please reply with a link to whatever you found that fixed it. ;)

* This, as well as mounting all the partitions and doing rm -rf in each.
** After doing it four or five times, can you really be sure? I can't.