Yes, I'm a newbie, but this concerns Slackware specifically.

My system: HP Pavilion Slimline (4 yrs old) w/ Win7
AMD Athlon II x2 250 dual core; 4GB DDR3 syst. mem.,
SATA2 HDD and DVD.

Trying to install Slack64 on a new (external) hdd WD5000AAKX 500GB SATA/600. The new hdd is connected directly to a SATA2 jack on the motherboard, and it has its own, independent power supply.

Twice, I made my own dumb mistakes and had to get out and start over. Three times, it was the installation process.

Question 1: How does one get out of the installation process nicely? CTL-ALT-DEL does not work (for me), nor do any of the usual commands.

I got out by taking the disk out of the DVD drive and shutting off the power (bad move). Afterwards, when I started trying again, (c)fdisk could find no media on /dev/sdb. I got around this by running
dd of=/dev/zero if=/dev/sdb bs=1048576b count=50 conv=noerror. "count=50" is most probably too much, but it works. After this, (c)fdisk works again.

On my first attempt, SETUP worked well, but install was incredibly slow. During this time I checked term-4 and found a huge number of repetitious kernel messages:

<date/time> darkstar user.warn kernel: ATA3: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
<date/time> darkstar user.info kernel: ATA3: SRST failed (errno = -16)
<date/time> darkstar user.info kernel: ATA3: hard resetting link
<date/time> darkstar user.info kernel: ATA3: nv: skipping hardstart on occupied port

Later, I saw: <header> SATA up 3Gips [or: 1.5Gips]

I assumed the slowness was due to the SATA cable being loose. Re-seated it at each end (but it seemed to be still tight at both ends)and the next install went well during SETUP. But when I got to INSTALL [FULL], it hung at the first pkg: aaa_base.

I tried to get out nicely: term-2, command:
shutdown -h -P now; the result was a message:

"EXT4-fs error (device sdb1): ext4_mb_generate_buddy:755: group 528, 23702 clusters in bitmap, 24544 in gd
sh: shutdown: command not found"

Question 2: What, if anything, could be causing SATA to go down other than a loose cable (or perhaps a bad cable) between my external hdd and the motherboard. I presume SATA goes down, because of the kernel messages saying "SATA up".

If I may importune a bit more, there were also many kernel messages (about 2 per minute) saying that a new, low-speed USB device had been "found". Each time, it was my mouse that had been "found".

Question3: How can I stop this?

Question 4: Is this behavior really "strange", as I said in the subject. Or am I simply simple (i.e., inept).

Thanks in advance for any advice.

paulb2

For the future, there is now a separate forum just for installation issues...

However, I can answer question one: the "shutdown" command isn't on the install medium, but I have found that "halt" and "reboot" work to get out of the install session neatly...

I can recommend you check the md5 and make sure your install dvd burned cleanly... (you can also use the script in usb-and-pxe-installers directory to make an installation thumbdisk... and try that)

After you login as "root", but before "Setup", try "fdisk /dev/sdb" and make sure your drive is there... If you are having hardware issues, then there isn't much to be done but try a new cable/drive combination to compare...

You should also check the "master / slave" pin on the second drive, and make sure you don't have two masters, two slaves... etc...

I hope you get her up and running.

@ slac-in-the-box
Thanks for the heads-up about the installation forum. I'll remember that.

Thanks, too, for the info on getting out of the installation process nicely - it hurt to just turn the power off.

I always partition my new hdd with cfdisk as the first step in SETUP. After I write the table to disk and quit, I immediately run fdisk-print to be sure it was written right.
Once, when I tried to start installing packages, INSTALL told me I had no LINUX partition and that I had to create at least one such partition. I switched to term2 and ran fdisk-print, That told me that I had three LINUX(83) partitions plus swap. Whazzup?!, I thought, scratching my head.

A previous time, when I had set up the same 3 LINUX(83) partitions, I formatted the fourth as FAT32(0B) (for backup of my Win7 data files). When SETUP asked on which partition / should be mounted, all the LINUX partitions were shown as NTFS. Doing the term2-fdisk-print dance showed that I indeed had three LINUX(83) partitions. Whazzup?!

I did not think of checking the md5sum on the installation disk, since I had ordered it from the Slackware store and trusted it.

When I played with a minimal installation of Slackware 4.0 about 15 years ago on an old computer (from 1994), with all of 740MB hdd and 8MB memory, I got somewhat proficient using the CLI terminal. Then my old computer crashed and I never installed Linux on my new one. The hdd on that old computer had been re-partitioned, so that Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (on top of MSDOS 6.22) was on the first 370MB and Slackware on the second 370 MB. But, enough of the old war stories!

I appreciate your taking your time to answer my plea for help. Thank you, again.

Paul B.

12/12/14 10:29pm CST

I've marked this thread as "solved", although it is just all wrapped up with nowhere to go.

The problem was a bad hdd, even though it was new, just off the shelf. I took it back to the shop and they ran their own diagnostic program on it, then they immediately replaced it free of charge and did not charge me the usual fee for the diagnostic test.

I apologize for posting the "problem" here before having hdd checked: should have done that first, I now know.

paulb2