Hello, I am trying to install Slackware Linux onto an old computer I have pieced together with spare parts. I have built another computer running Red Hat 8.0 so I know the basics of Linux. Well, here is the problem. I have two IDE hard drives, and one SCSI hard drive. I boot with the "adaptec.s" boot parameter and I can see my scsi hdd. I use fdisk to partition my drives. When I try to partition the master IDE, hda, there’s all this stuff left over from my unsuccessful installation of FreeBSD. I try to get rid of all of that by using "o" to make a new dos disk label. Then I partition my hard drive into 3 partitions, hda1, which will be my root partition, which is roughly 192MB. Then, hda2. Which will be my swap partition, which is also about 192MB. Then my last partition, which is the rest of my disk which will be /usr. I change the properties for hda2 to be a swap partition and the others I leave at Linux. Then I "w" for write. It seems to work fine, but if I go back in by doing fdisk /dev/hda it doesn’t see those partitions I made, but instead it sees those old FreeBSD leftovers. Then, if I try to use cfdisk, it sees what I defined. So, then I make hdb all one big partition with fdisk. Then I make sda one big partition with fdisk. Then when I enter setup, It only sees my SCSI hdd. After a while of this I just started trying random things, but I noticed one odd thing. When I partitioned my first IDE hdd with the SunOS disk label, it could see my swap partition. I thought I had solved my problem, but with the SunOS disk label you cannot make a partiton of type Linux. (. Oh yeah, strangely windows fdisk does see the partitions I made for hda and hdb and sda. Any ideas on fixing this will really help me out, I think I may be going insane trying to figure this out. Thanks in advance,

Peter

Well, since no one answered you, I'll throw in what I would do in your situation. This does not imply that it is the "right" way but if it works, that's good. TIMTOWTDI!

I don't think there is anything that FreeBSD did that was out of the ordinary so I wouldn't fear the daemon. Anyway, you mentioned that dos FDISK sees the partitions. I would make a DOS boot disk (if you didn't already), boot off the disk, do an fdisk /MBR, go into FDISK and delete all the non-DOS partitions (or pretty much every partition since you are starting clean). Then, reboot the machine to proceed with the slackware install.

Either that will work or it will result in bringing someone out of the woodwork to suggest another way because my way wasn't the right way =] I just didn't want to see you left hanging!

tpro

You can use the cfdisk program with the "-z" option to start with an empty partition table. Just use partition types 83 (default) standard ext2 and 82 swap partitions. Mark the partition desired as bootable and then write it. Reboot the machine for all the partitons to be seen correctly.

I forgot to mention i have already tried the fdisk /mbr comand before, and it had no affect. ) ... sorry, but it was a good idea. I just tried using cfdisk with the -z option and i am still having the same problems. Cfdisk is seeing the partitions i made, and windows fdisk is seeing the partitions i made, but fdisk still doesnt. I think that is why it isnt decting the partitions i made. Oh yeah, this may be entirely unrealted... but sometimes when i boot from the slackware CD, it goes through, dects my devices and IDE hdds. Then it loads my SCSI driver and then prints out some crazy stuff ending with "kernel panic: loop 1" i dont know what in the world that means but when i reboot it never happens twice in a row. hmm, maybe it is related. oh well, thanks for your help.

Peter

For anyone who cares I found the problem. I was pretty convinced that thre was something physicaly wrong with the hard drive, and being rather short on funds i couldnt get another. After i basicly gave up trying i went to the hard drive manufactures website and found a program that can "zero fill" my hard drive. Now this turns EVERY bit on the hard drive to zero, including the mbr. (oh yeah, now might be a good time to say i tried to install slackware linux after this and i had a wierd problem with the partitioning software always seeing the FreeBSD partitions even after i thought i had deleted them.) So, i was aware that this could totlay destroy my hard drive but seeing as it was a 1.6 GB drive from 1996, i felt that it was worth the risk. After I zero filled the drive, everything worked. :o) no idea what the problem really was but im thinking maybe there was something wrong with the mbr, or just a physical defect somewhere. I hope this will be useful for somebody. :o)

Great for you, you just did what I was going to suggest.

have you heard about "macro" virus, i think i heard that is a type of virus that is in the binaries of your hd, in the "source".
i dont know exactly the name of this kind of virus and i'm a poor english speaker i apologise any writing mistakes