Hello, I am pretty much a newbie at linux. I was wondering if anyone else has gotten slack to run on an ASUS p5nd2-sli Deluxe motherboard.

I was looking around in the garage, I and found enough parts to build a computer to put in the garage. Here are the parts I have installed.

Asus P5ND2-ALI Deluxe
Intel 3.0Gig HT processor
2 gigs ram
samsung dvd+-rw (IDE)
Asus 52X CD-Rom (IDE)
Seagate Barracuda 80Gig Sata I (sata)
100Meg Zip Drive (IDE)
ATI X1550 PCIexpress Video Card
Creative Labs Audigy 2 sound card

MSoft Winders (<- not a type-o I am from the hills of east tennessee)works fine with no issues. I can't get slackware 12 to install. or more to the point, I can't get it too see the sata hard drive when I use CFDISK to partition it. And just to clarify, it is being seen in CMOS.

The only thing I haven't tried is putting a second hard drive on the controller and making a raid. but it has been my experience that setting a raid up so any OS can see it can be a challenge, so I did't try it.

Thanks in advance for any help.

SLPDAVE

when I first installed Slackware (last year, version 11) I could never get anything but fdisk to successfully partition my drive. I believe I tried cfdisk several times, but I had problems "seeing" the drive and getting the right permissions.

Once I learned fdisk, I never had any problems. If you just type fdisk at the prompt after booting the Slack cds (and after logging in), you should get a quick usage guide.

Let me expand.... I did try fdisk but to no avail. My problem with fdisk is that with what limited knowledge I have in linux I know i need to use the command "fdisk /dev/*****" the stars are I am assuming where the actual device goes but I don't know what to put to access the sata drive, and there is no documentation that I have found that explains what device number the sata controller is.

hopefully I am not being too confusing.

SLPDAVE

SATA drives will be /dev/sd* (e.g. /dev/sda).

Thank you I will try /dev/sd when I get home this afternoon. What are some good reference tools for commands and structures in linux. I am old school and prefer books but online is O.K. (I learned DOS from memorizing the MSDos 2 book and wearing out a PCjr.

So to reiterate, I will try /dev/sd* this afternoon.

Thanks, David

Nylex, Thank you a million.

fdisk found my sata drive at /dev/sda I used the command "fdisk /dev/sda" and it found the drive. It was easy to partition using the help file in fdisk.

I also setup a swap drive with 1meg of the drive, is this enough for slack? If not I will not be using this machine for anything important so I can erase it anytime and rebuild it if necessary or if I just feel like it.

Right now setup is formating the drive.

Thanks again.

SLPDAVE

Hi

The 1 MB of swap is trivial. I hope that is a typo. With the hardware you listed the swap will probably not be used. I would suggest that you set the swap to at least a 1 GB RAM size. Your RAM is 2 GB so a 2GB swap won't hurt. If you suspend or do anything in compile sessions then you could use the swap. That would depend on the sessions you are using for a build or whatever.

Sorry, not 1meg but 1Gig was what I should have written. Also since I am really at this point just trying out Linux, since there seems to be issues with slack directly supporting the secondary (non-necessary) hardware in the machine like sound card and such. I really don't know how to add support for devices into linux and upon trying Kubuntu it recognized everything so I am going to cut my teeth with it for now.

Once I see if I can get everything working under Kubuntu, then I will retry slack. I don't know why but I seem to be mysteriously drawn to Slackware but I don't feel worthy of it.

Thanks for the help, I guess the drives were available the whole time and I just didn't know how to get them partitioned.

slpdave

Hi,

You can reference 'Slackware-Links' formerly 'Slackware LQ Suggestions Links!' for some good online reference.

Get your feet wet! If you make mistakes then work out for a solution you will learn a lot more with Slackware. Your choice!

I just think to give up without really trying, you are doing a dis-service to gaining of some good experiences. If you get hung up or confused about something then just pop back here and we will help you.

Hope you keep trying.

@SLPdave
I was in your same boat not too long ago. around january of this year i took linux seriously. i had messed with ubuntumuchbandwidth (funny old work joke cuz i downloaded it at work and ended up pegging the t1. hahaha) but it only lasted a couple of days. i have a friend who told me about slackware and kept it in the back of my mind until i had time to mess with it. I, like you was completely new to the whole linux scenario. I didn't really understand the structure, it was intimidating to install and then it became a challenge to over come. A good challenge, one that allows you to expand your knowledge. I think that slackware might be considered for the advanced user but i think thats wrong. I think it's more for the people who want to learn and get their hands dirty. It's been 6 months since i started playing with slackware linux, and i've learned a lot. i think more than i could have possibly learned from any other linux distro. With in this time, i've setup a slackware server at my work with LAMP and running Nagios, Cacti, OTRS and MediaWiki. All of which i learned how to build from scratch. honestly, being the newbie at linux that i still am, i don't think you will learn that much from kubuntu.

Anyways, i guess thats my two cents about that.

Oh and honestly, i've never meet a more friendly, outgoing and helpful community as the slackware community.

[/QUOTE]Oh and honestly, i've never meet a more friendly, outgoing and helpful community as the slackware community.[/QUOTE]

I agree, I was lurking for a few months with curiousities about linux, everyone seems to be genuinely helpful. Like I said above I am a member over at www.explorerforums.com and it's the same there.

Like I said in an earlier post in this thread, The computer I am using was built out of extra parts I had laying around, literally. I have been doing IT work professionally for so many years I occasionally have enough parts to build another computer with. So if I play with KUBUNTU for a while (could be a day or a year) then just blow off the drive a install something else. I won't keep anything important on the machine. I stream mp3's off of a machine called blackie. I have a P4 extreme Quad core machine to play games on and use for data-protection on a raid 10. I use a laptop for work because of desk space requirements.

One thing I am interested in doing (which put me on this road to start with) was to install a webserver on a SLUG, and run it at our business. The static IP is free with our broadband so why not. Our company website is hosted off-site so I can play for nothing.

Thanks for the reply's and the advice/links. I feel that KUBUNTU may be eradicated soon, and Slackware 12 reinstalled. But only time will tell.

slpdave

My favorite is Running Linux from O'Reilly. Linux in a Nutshell is also good to have around, but it's a reference instead of a guide. Also, you're smart to choose Slackware, because Slackware has the closest thing I've found to a good, beginner-friendly guide in Slackware LInux Essentials, aka The Slackbook. The idea that Slackware is "not user-friendly" is not supported by the facts: if you read, Slackware is quite beginner-friendly. If you don't, then of course it's difficult to work with.

Joel

I have to agree with you there. My first encounter with Linux was with Slackware on an old junker PC sitting in my basement late last year. Since it was just a hobby at the time with no consequences if I screw up the PC, I went through the courses on http://www.linux.org and learned a lot. I went through the beginner guide before even installing, and then I installed Slackware using an install guide I found somewhere. I've never had a problem at all (every "gotcha" I've ever encountered has been solved with a quick search). I just recently read the Slackbook (of which I was not aware until recently) and although I didn't learn that much because of previous reading, it is definitely a valuable tool for Slackware noobs.

Just because Slackware requires a little bit of research doesn't make it difficult.

Hi,

I agree that if you read then the road is not as bumpy. Most people fail to even read simple documentation let alone a 'man' page.

You could also reference 'Slackware-Links' which was compiled from 'Slackware LQ Suggestions Links!' to get some good online reference.

Loads of guides and books along with other useful links.

I'll add something I've mentioned before in this forum: I ditched a "beginner-friendly" distro (PCLinuxOS) for Slackware for just this reason. There's no PCLinuxOS hANDbOOK. I liked PCLinuxOS, because it "just worked," however when it started to "just not work" I got a little frustrated. The only place to go was their very friendly forum, inaccessible if I'm having an internet connection problem, and too slow to respond. I had some experience administrating Slackware by the time the real problems showed up with PCLinuxOS, so I tried applying my Slackware knowledge. In contrast to Slackware, I found PCLinuxOS to be a total mess: config files were spread out all over the place, with only a hard to follow trail.

Slackware started feeling easy at that point.

Joel