Help with installing Linux with an Ultra-ATA (Ultra100 TX2) card

EThitop · 05-08-2004, 05:29 PM

Hello all,

I am new to this site, it appears to be a great help forum!

I really need help with installing Slackware, I have my heardrives on an Ultra100 TX2 card from promise ( http://www.promise.com/product/produ...=11&familyId=3 ).

I have succesfully installed Linux before on this card with the SuSE 9.0 distribution, so I do know that there is a driver that allows linux to work with this Ultra-ATA card.

I am using the Slackware 9.1 with the 2.4*** kernel, if for some reason I need to get the Slackware Current (non official but up to date distro) then that is no problem. I have tinkered a little with the bootdisks such as scsi.s, etc... but I do not think I am doing that correctly.

When I put the Slackware 9.1 CD1 disc into my computer and boot up then I am welcomed with the Slackware start screen, I press enter and then I type in "root" w/out the " " around it and it tells me to partition my drive, I tried cfdisk and it says "FATAL ERROR: Cannot open disk drive. Press any key to exit cfdisk"

I have also tried fdisk (and then any of the paths it tells me to type) and it says "Unable to open (path)"

Can someone please help me with installing Slackware Linux 9.x with my Ultra100 TX2 card?

Thanks A BUNCH!!!

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P.S.

I posted this message in the Slackware->Installation Help section as well and I am sorry for doing that. The reason why I am posting here is b/c this section is much more popular than the other.

sorry

EThitop · 05-08-2004, 06:40 PM

I have recently read about something that says to add "ide=reverse" and that will fix my problem. I don't know where I would put that though....

At least I'm finding "something" out.............

I may have to go back to using SuSE Linux but I'd rather not... I want to try slackware!

EThitop · 05-08-2004, 07:37 PM

My biggest problem seems to be that whenever I try to access the hard drive, as in I'll type "cfdisk" (or fdisk for that matter) it says it cannot open the hard drive. Is my hard drive locked? Do I have to mount the drive or something first? When I type /mnt it says permission denied. I'm sure that it recognizes my hard drives b/c they are both Western Digital and right after I press enter from the first screen I see a bunch of messages about what it detects, etc... and I do see 2 WDC listings as well as my CD drives.

Someone please help!

Demonbane · 05-08-2004, 08:00 PM

What does the kernel detect these drives as (hdX)?
to see the messages again type "dmesg" after the CD loads.

EThitop · 05-08-2004, 08:05 PM

Thanks for the reply!

Ok I typed dmesg and I can't see all of the messages, but I'll try to read it really fast. I see that it says WDC (then it says it's model number) then it says ATA disk drive.

Demonbane · 05-08-2004, 08:06 PM

on the left it should say something like hda,hdb,hdc etc

EThitop · 05-08-2004, 08:10 PM

Well, at the start screen and where it says "boot: " if I just press enter it has all these messages flash by quickly, and during those messages I happen to see the WDC (Western Digital) hdd's appear....

Ohhhhhhh!

Ok, the first one says hde
and for the second WDC hdd it says hdf

Demonbane · 05-08-2004, 08:14 PM

try "cfdisk /dev/hde" or "cfdisk /dev/hdf"

EThitop · 05-08-2004, 08:15 PM

Ok, just to be trying things, I have tried the following....

I typed "fdisk /dev/hde" and it says

Quote:

The number of cylinders for this disk is set at 9729
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK

and now I will reply to your last message in just a second....

Demonbane · 05-08-2004, 08:17 PM

you can in most cases safely ignore that message

EThitop · 05-08-2004, 08:20 PM

Ok, well I just tried cfdisk /dev/hdf and I told it to create a new partition (50GB)..... What should I do though, shouldn't I create a swap partition, and a boot partition, I want my main partition to be about 50GB (i have a total of 200GB)

How big would you recommend me making my swap partition, etc..

Thanks to you, I feel like I have got so much further already! THANKS!!!!

vectordrake · 05-08-2004, 08:23 PM

BTW, if you want to read dmesg, you can pipe it through your pager

Code:

dmesg | less(or more or most - you get the idea)

EThitop · 05-08-2004, 08:28 PM

something like "dmesg -s less" when I do that it just does the same thing as "dmesg" lol I must be doing something wrong....

EThitop · 05-08-2004, 08:31 PM

Ok I'll go and read a little about swap partitions and boot partitions, and after I do that I will post what happens.

BRB

Demonbane · 05-08-2004, 08:34 PM

The size of your swap partition will depend on your RAM and possibly usage, try make it so that RAM + swap = 1 gig. If you have more than a gig of RAM create one anyway, but make it small say 128mb.

Creating a separate partition for /boot is not mandatory, so basically you only need to create 2 partitions, one for swap and one for your root filesystem