Hi


I am pretty new to linux but have managed to install SLAM64 on my AMD and having a problem setting up multiboot from Linux on an IDE drive and also getting the liloconfig to see Windows XP on my SATA drive.


I have tried various options but it seems that even when I boot with sata.i the windows drive does not show up

if I try mount /dev/sda1

or any other sda I can think of it comes up with an error saying that this image does not exist.

I type fdisk -l and the windows SATA drive is not listed but the linux boot and swap drives are listed

i.e hda1 and hda5 for the swap

I have SATA controller enabled in the bios and the boot order loads the IDE drive with linux on first and RAID SATA drive second. If I swap the order in the bios it loads Windows XP happily.

Any ideas?

Check in the output of dmesg to see if the drive is detected from what you describe it does not seem like the module for the SATA chipset on the motherboard is being loaded. What are the parts being used in the system BTW?

I have watched very closely the boot messages and typed dmesg
and it shows nothing about SATA drive.

There are a couple of errors such as

warning DMA seems to be switched off on your drive etc etc

and it succesfully loads hda1

but no mention of SATA drive at all.

I am a bit stuck with this

Pretty obvious to me that your Linux doesn't support either the Sata disk or the RAID.

Cure

(1) Install another Linux that does or

(2) Go the long way using Windows boot loader

Thanks for the reply

1) Damn! that is the second distro I've tried and I like slack but needed one that would work with AMD Sempron 64 bit
I only want to use it for webserver and web development stuff but if I am going to hit loads of hurdles with it then maybe I should look for another 64bit Distro that works.

2) Would do this but I'm using Windows XP home and not sure if you can multi boot with this version.

Any ideas?

If you have to use 64-bit try Kanotix and Suse. All 32-bit distros can run on AMD64 CPU if you are not already aware.

Yes the NTLDR of XP can do it. You need the Linux in working order first, has its boot loader inside root partition, copy out the boot loader's first 512 bytes using special programs, put it into the "C" drive, unhide XP's boot.ini, edit it to include Linux as a booting entry and hide it again. Whereas in a proper installation of a Linux XP will be dual booted without the user lifting a finger.

NTLDR is really a white elephant because by the time you have a working Linux you can amend its boot loader to boot XP using 1/10 the effort required by NTLDR.

Using XP to boot Linux is for users who cannot afford XP's MBR replaced by Linux and must keep it untouched like a virgin, in a belief he/she could lose the warranty of the machine if such change takes place.

Thanks for your reply,

Yes, I get what you say about windows. Much rather fiddle around with linux. I think I will try Kanotix next.

Hopefully it will make things a bit easier.

Thanks

Rahish

Just to say,

Installed Kanotix at the weekend,

Compared to Slackware, it is a breeze. It actually installed all the drivers for sound, video etc and connected to the web through LAN from the install CD.

All working relatively smoothley now following hard drive install, only trouble now, doesn't seem to be much 64 bit software available for it.

Thanks for your help though.

Rahish