Trying to install Slackware64 on IDE disk
 

When I boot with the Slackware64 DVD and run either fdisk or cfdisk to partition the hard drive, it only sees the SATA drive, not the IDE drive.

I have a Gigabyte MB #GA-880GM-D2H that has four SATA ports and an IDE port. I have two hard drives, the first one is a 200GB IDE (ST3200822A) and the second one is a 1TB SATA (ST31000524AS).

The DVD-RW drive and the 200 GB IDE drive are plugged into the IDE controller on the motherboard and the 1 TB SATA drive is plugged into SATA 1.

In the BIOS I have it configured as:

IDE Channel 0 Master: ST3200822A (200 GB IDE)
IDE Channel 0 Slave : TSSTCorp CDDVDW (DVD-RW IDE)
IDE Channel 2 Master: None
IDE Channel 2 Slave : None
IDE Channel 3 Master: ST31000524AS (1 TB SATA)
IDE Channel 3 Slave : None

(I have also tried it with the 1 TB SATA on Channel 2 Master).

When I boot Slackware64 and fdisk/cfdisk will see:

/dev/sda = ST31000524AS (1 TB SATA) only.

More BIOS Configuration:

Hard Disk Boot Priority:

1. Ch0 M: ST3200822A (200 GB IDE)
2. Ch3 M: ST31000524AS (1 TB SATA)
3. Bootable Add-in Cards

Also:

First Boot Device: CDROM
Second Boot Device: Hard Disk
Third Boot Device: Floppy

And:

OnChip SATA Controller: Enabled
OnChip SATA Type: Native IDE
(There are two other choices: RAID and AHCI - don't know if that would make a difference or not)

I'd like to use the 200 GB IDE drive as the system drive and the 1 TB SATA as /home.

I hate to say it, but with Windows 7, it sees both drives without any issue and asks which drive to install on.

Did you try

Hi,

What do you see in 'dmesg' for the IDE ST3200822A (200 GB IDE) & TSSTCorp CDDVDW (DVD-RW IDE) drives?

Should be a bios option for IDE before SATA <-- or something similar.

cat /proc/partitions
or fdisk -l will list the current order of partitions.

Linux uses libata and fully supports AHCI.

;)
Nobody ever said that Slackware is a substitution for windows. I think ubuntu has also such a nice graphical and user-friendly installer.

Yes, with the message that no device exists.


@ onebuck and @ disturbed1 - I'll give those a try when I get home from work.

@ hua - lol ;-) I wanted to see how a non-linux os would see the drives. :-P

Try to run huge.s (kernel image) when boot from DVD instead of hugesmp.s.

Just out of curiosity, where is IDE Channel 1 and how would I make the ST31000524AS drive a Slave on IDE Channel 3 instead of a master?


The SATA ports on the MB are like:

xxxxxx SATA 2_3
xxxxxx SATA 2_2
xxxxxx SATA 2_0 xxxxxx SATA 2_1 <-- ST31000524AS is plugged in here.

Hi,

Unless your motherboard provides multiple 'IDE' then you will only have the single 'IDE' interface, one connector that will support a master & slave. The latter of these links is for Slackware references in general and very useful to garnish helpful information.

Hi,

One after thought to try: Change the Master & slave positions. Make your ROM media the master with the Hard drive as slave. Remember the master is at the end of the cable.

Do you have a BIOS setting for 'native IDE' or some just say 'IDE mode'?

Quick & dirty would be to just disconnect the SATA drives to do the install then modify the mount point for '/home' after the install. Slackware install will find & assign drive as a 'sd' device via libATA.

To be sure the problem is not on the hardware side, you could try if the installer sees the IDE drive when the SATA drive is unplugged. I don't mean installing, but just running the installer. Anf maybe vice versa. I recall having similar problems with my quite similar setup, but IIRC it was rather a hardware problem, like incorrectly set jumpers or something.

I'm a linux newbie with moderate computer knowledge but I think this would be the problem. In bios you should have a RAID/SATA mode setting like this
http://www.nikmakris.com/blog/image....id-options.jpg or http://www.pecos-softwareworks.com/p.../bios_raid.jpg and maybe another like http://i.neoseeker.com/neo_image/143...aid_config.jpg

and you want to set it to RAID, or AHCI, or just play around with them to see the results. I am not really knowledgeable about RAID or RAID controllers or anything like that, but you should read the wiki on Advanced Host Controller Interface http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance...ller_Interface it kind of sheds some light on the subject.

The hugesmp.s kernel should work with the same devices as the regular huge.s kernel. The problem is how the PC is configured.

The BIOS/CMOS/EFI should have an option of the primary boot device in the Boot section. This should be a list similar to this:

You need to have the IDE-HDD (if this is the case for your system) set as one of the primary boot devices (usually the second device to the selected optical drive). This device should be configured in the jumpers to Master.

cfdisk and fdisk should auto-detect the /dev/sda and/or /dev/hda and show the appropriate device, but if not try the following:

Just a word of precaution, if you use a single port IDE setup, try to limit usage of the IDE port solely to being used with Hard drives or optical drives, but not both. You should use the SATA ports if you have them for all devices like hard drives and optical drives with the primary hard drive set to port0 and the optical device set to the next port in the series depending on how many hard drives you support.

I owe you a beverage of your choice. ;-)

I unplugged the sata drive and sure enough the IDE came up in cfdisk just fine. I then plugged in the sata drive again and booted the slackware dvd. Once I got to the root prompt I checked out dmesg and sure enough, the IDE hard drive is registering after the sata drive (e.g. /dev/sdb) so I have the sata drive on /dev/sda and the IDE on /dev/sdb.

I'm currently installing Slackware64 on my new machine while I type this on my old one. ;-)



Well, I thought this was solved....

I tried installed to /dev/sdb configured lilo as such and now I get the following error and then the system hangs when booting:

LILO - Keytable read/checksum error

I even installed to /dev/sda and I still get the error.

I'm stumped now....


Update:

Booted Linux Mint 11 Debian Edition and it found the drives as:

/dev/sda --- 200 GB
/dev/sdb --- 1 TB

Just what I wanted. Although the install is cheesy where you can only specify a / and a /home partition and that's it. I just want to use slackware :-*(

A rather simple solution to that would be to compare the lilo.conf Mint creates with the one Slackware does. My guess is this has either to do with the BIOS boot order or the "compact" flag in lilo.conf.