For about a month now, i've been having some problems when i boot up slack, it detects my first hd with xp on it (20gb) and when it checks the slave hd with slack on it (3 gb) it takes a long time and then says timeout.

It will slow down each time it checks something on it during the startup but despite these errors, it continues to boot and i run it fine with no problems.

At one point i was going to try installing redhat 8.0 from the cd again after having a bit of trouble setting it up, and when i went to install it, it searched for the hard drive and froze, each time. Now i know the cd is fine cause i used it to install on my other computer.

Thanks to the help of this board, i got slack up and running with everything i need. I just wouldn't mind knowing the answer to this odd situation. Maybe it's due to a bad IDE cable?

Here's one of the messages i got from /var/log/messages (at least i think that's where it stores the errors on startup):

Feb 25 14:56:43 home kernel: hdb: 6306048 sectors (3229 MB) w/418KiB Cache, CHS=782/128/63, UDMA(33)
Feb 25 14:56:43 home kernel: hdb:hdb: timeout waiting for DMA

One more thing, i've downloaded openoffice, and at one point i compiled it, and it took a long long time, but was unable to run it? Any tips on how to start it from the command line or where it's found would be great.

Thanks again!

You can try appending a kernel parameter of "ide=nodma" in your lilo.conf file. If it appears to resolve the problem then you need to look into the IDE chipset and kernel drivers. You may need to update the kernel or build it using different options.


In regard to OpenOffice.org, if you actually installed it, the startup command should be located in /usr/local/OpenOffice.org1.0/program and the command is soffice. If you haven't run it as yet then I think it start a user level install to configure for your account.

Good luck.

Thanks for the reply, i'll try both of those things once i get home.

However i don't see why i'd have to recompile the kernel cause when i tried installing redhat, it just froze on it, and i did even get to set anything up, perhaps there are bad sectors on it maybe?

Anyways, i'll post my results later on tonight

anyways, it's getting late here, early morning class but here goes, i'll give you what you need: (again)

i added "ide=nodma" to the end of lilo.conf but i got these errors when i ran lilo command:

Warning: LBA32 addressing assumed
Warning: Int 0x13 function 8 and function0x48 return different head/sector geometries for BIOS drive 0x80
Warning: Int 0x13 function 8 and function0x48 return different head/sector geometries for BIOS drive 0x81
Unrecognized token "ide" at or above line 45 in file /etc/lilo.conf

i wasn't quite sure where to add that line you gave me, i tried in the "global" section of lilo and where it mounts my linux partition, neither worked

Is there an easier way then to type up the errors? how do i highlight and copy past from command line to browser?

Little by little i will learn, gotta start somewhere and i'm sticking with it

Thanks again guys, oh, and girls (are there many linux girl users out there? just a thought)

The syntax for the kernel append statement is

append = "ide=nodma"

The line can be inserted in the global section if desired, but it will effect all image sections. I prefer to add the statement into a specific image section. Especially for testing. But it allows me to configure different kernel statements for the various image requirements. If the image section is used then you have to press the [Ctrl] key when the lilo prompt is displayed to allow the selection of the image where the append statement was added.

My thought on the suggestion in reference to the RedHat failure to boot is a possible problem in the IDE chipset support drivers either in the support area or in the proper detection. These problems could of have been resolved in the latest kernel. Modern default kernels are using the options that provide the best performance when possible. These options are not always as reliable as the more traditional level of support that perform considerably slower.

You mentioned the possiblity of a bad IDE cable. However, unless you know the cable may be damaged in some way then the probabablity is not very high. More likely, might be the drives are setup to use cable select instead of master/slave designation as a possible hardware configuration area. You stated that the first hdd has XP installed and probably without noticeable problems. You were able to install Slack so it would appear that your problem is most likely something fairly subtle.

i added the line but i got a different error when saving the changes.

when i rebooted i got:

hdb: drive not ready for command

since it only takes 20 secs max on a 333, i'm just going to leave it as is and wait it out, thanks for your informative reply however

As for openoffice, i found it under /usr/OpenOffice.org/programs, ran soffice and i got a gui to install it, however it looks like i filled my 3 gigs and will have to make a partition off the other drive, but that should work fine.

Thank you.