Short description: When attempting to install Debian (Nov 18 2004), I get an error stating that there are no partionable media or some such.

System:

Intel D915PBL
Pentium 4 3.4GHz
Hard drive: Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10000RPM

Long description:
I am mainly looking for /any/ linux distro to go on here. It does not have to be debian if for example mandrake has the best/only drivers that will recognize the drive.

I had tried the older debian netinst from linuxiso.org and that will hang after outputing the line "ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6" which I am told is because the default kernel (2.2.something) is too old and lacks any SATA support.

My most recent attempt was using the 20041118 image which successfully starts booting, and begins the network installer. However after it gets to the point where you would partion a HDD, it red screen of deaths complaining there isn't one. The BIOS sees the drive on SATA 0. I've tried moving it to SATA 1, no luck. Both PATA are tied up with a CDRW and DVDRW respectively. If I absolutely have to, I can put an old PATA HDD in, removing the CDRW. But I'd rather not have to go that route if at all possible.

Please advise.
Thanks in advance.

It would also be helpful if someone could post the chipset that the board uses to control the SATA drives; some kernels list only particular chipsets as supported. I don't know this/where to find the info.

All help appreciated.

First, check with "lspci". This should give you something to go off of. If that doesn't work, sometimes that type of information can be divined from the cryptic messages written on the chips themselves. Google will be your best friend in this quest.

Can knoppix see your drive (ver. 3.7 using knoppix26 kernel) ? If it can, then you may be able to figure out which driver knoppix is using. You will need to be using the 2.6 kernel for this to work. From knoppix 3.7 "boot:knoppix26 2". Go to /sys. Type the following "find -name 'driver*' ". This will give you places to look.

I am using pata, and my sata is either not supported or not loaded (because I have no sata devices currently); therefore, I can't tell you where to look. It looks like /sys/bus/pci/drivers is a good place to start. At least some (if not all) of the directories inside are the names of modules. I believe you can tell which are being used with "ls -R"; look for the ones that have stuff in them (instead of just new_id).

Good luck. You may find that you need to make a custom initrd in order to get the system to boot once it is installed (if the kernel requires a driver before it can mount the root file system).