Install DVD not detecting SATA drive
 

I've got a shiny new computer, and I'd like to install Slackware on it.
Unfortunately, I can't partition the drives because Slackware can't find it. I've never worked with SATA before, so I'm not sure if I'm forgetting something or what.
The bios is correctly picking up the drive in slot IDE 0, and is able to display size and cylender information, but fdisk -l shows nothing, hda isn't found and sda isn't showing up. According to /var/logs/messages IDE 0 and 1 are probed twice, (IDE 1 is my dvd drive), but theres no confirmation message that anything is found. 20 lines or so later "rocketRAID 3xxx controller driver v1.2" is loaded. Any thoughts or suggestions? Also, is it normal that SATA slots are appearing with the prefix IDE?

Thanks in advance!

Welcome to LQ!

Which kernel are you using? To install use the hugesmp.s;
then before you reboot after the install, chroot into the
system and change to a generic kernel. This is covered in
the documentation.

Did you check the md5sum of the iso image you downloaded?

Did you check the md5sum of the DVD you burned from it?

What is the make and model of your motherboard ... your
hard drive? Your DVD drive?

It would also help if you can actually post some of the
message that you see on the screen; including the very
end where it tells why you can't boot.

Might I suggest that you use "cfdisk /dev/sda" rather than
using the fdisk command ... even the fdisk man page says
to use cfdisk.

I had all sorts of problems installing debian on a drive using a high point tech raid card. I finally gave up and decided on software raid. Hopefully I can learn something new here.

Which version of Slackware are you using? If you're using anything older than the current version 12.1 you may have problems with stuff like hdparm. I discovered this the hard way. The problem is that older kernel and programs wouldn't pass ATAPI or ATA info through the SCSI interface (I believe this is literally called ATA Pass-Through).

The answer, as suggested, is a newer kernel, but you may have to update some system utilities as well. Or, upgrade to 12.1.

Now if you're having this problem with 12.1, as pointed out earlier, not using "hugesmp.s" (or "huge.s") would be the most likely problem. If none of those work, you need to look to see if your chipset is even being detected properly. If the computer is as new and shiny as you say, it will most likely obey the AHCI spec, and when you compile a new kernel you would use that for your SATA interfaces. However, any distro's install kernel will try that first for that reason.

Assuming none of these suggestions are working, tell us what your chipset is so we can do some cross-referencing.

Mike

Wow, Thanks for the help! I'll try to answer all the questions. I don't think I was clear enough in my first post though - this is a totally new computer with no os or even HDD partitions. I can boot successfully using the 12.1 DVD, I just can't seem to find my sata drives.

Thanks!

I think I've been using hugesmp.s to start up - Thats the default right? I'm pretty sure I called it by hand on the second attempt, I think thats what I've been using.

Unfortunately I can't get as far as switching the kernel - I can't run setup to install, since the drive isn't detected.

I've been using http://www.slackbook.org/ for documentation, and I can't find another source on the Slackware webpage. Could you point me to a better source?

Yup, looked good

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136218

GIGABYTE GA-EP45-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128345

SAMSUNG Black 22X DVD+R 2MB Cache SATA DVD Burner
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827151171

I'm not having any problems booting - I can boot using the DVD as a livecd running off a ram disk. Let me know any logs or messages that would be helpful and I'll post them. I'm coming off Ubuntu so you might have to give me the path.

Second thing I tried, but it spat out a message that it couldn't find any drives and booted me back to the terminal

12.1

The Slackware book mentioned this - and suggested turning on legacy PATA support in the bios to spoof the SATA drive into looking like a parallel port. I didn't try this, since I'm using the 12.1 dvd and that sounded like a problem for older kernels. If you think its a good idea, I'll give it a shot.

This is a totally virgin computer - I just put it together Sunday. No Upgrading for me :(

Ok - When I ran through the log last night I didn't see any problems or warnings related to AHCI (although I did see a couple ACPI warnings...) I'll take another looksee - might not have been looking at the right place. My CPU is being detected correctly (the model and make is spit out in the log), but you mean the motherboard chipset right? Where would I look to make sure thats found correctly?


Thanks again! Let me know any logs/information that might help and I'll try to post it up.

First, my searches on Google produced lots of people having problems with both
the Intel P45 chipset and Intel ICH10. Since the manufacturer's write drivers for
Microsoft, and not Linux, it's best not to buy the "latest and greatest" products
until you check first to see if the chipset is supported.

If this were an Asus board, I'd say check the motherboard CD for support.
But with Gigabyte, I wouldn't expect anything.

Slackware-12.1 comes with a 2.6.24.5 kernel. It did not have the ICH10 patch:
However, the 2.6.26 kernel does have it:
So that patch was added to the mainline kernel sometime after 2.6.24.5.

You can search LKML, try more Google searches, or grep kernel sources to
find out when it was added.

There are many ways to get Slackware installed to that drive. How much Linux
savvy do you have, and how much work are you willing to do? If you just want
to pop a CD/DVD in the drive, boot, and install; you have three choices:

1 - wait until Slackware has a kernel that supports ICH10
2 - find another distro that has a bootable kernel that supports ICH10
3 - pay someone to do the work for you to use Slackware now

That would have been good to know - Bad decision on my part.

Yeah, it looks like theres some info out there on this question. I did some googling before I posted the question and was unable to find much info, but I didn't think to include p45 in the search terms. That seems to find much more info - I'll have to spend some time reading up tomarrow and see if there are any easy solutions

I chose Slackware because I heard it was a good one to learn on - clearly it does not disappoint! I'm willing to work pretty hard to get this working, since the whole reason I'm moving away from ubuntu is to learn these kind of thorny questions. I have some experience with gnu's tools... I feel pretty comfortable working in the terminal, and I often do shell scripting and work in cygwin for my job.
But I know very little about the internals of Linux. I've never compiled my own kernel, or ever written a line of c (c++ I have worked in though).

I do have an old IDE drive sitting around if you think it makes more sense to start with a clean install and then upgrade the kernel to include support for sata

Thanks!

There are several ways of getting Slackware installed on that board.
I've not done it, and am too busy with another project to think it
through clearly at the moment, but here are some thoughts. Hopefully,
some other guys will come alongside and offer other suggestions even
before I have time to investigate further.

First, your choice of Slackware to learn GNU Linux is very good. It's
the oldest surviving Linux distro, and is put together very sanely. You
will find all the tools you need.

Maybe someone who's thinking more clearly will come around before I have
a chance to help more. But I think the easiest way to get this done is to
create a USB boot image with a 2.6.26 kernel and start the install that
way -- assuming that your BIOS allows USB boot...

I could build that kernel and offer the necessary stuff for you, just need
to check more on HOW-TO do this.

One of the first things I do when performing a new installation is downloading and compiling the latest kernel. Thanks to the menu-driven make system, building the kernel is very easy--the hard part is deciding which options to select, which I'm finding harder and harder to do with each new version because there's just so much new stuff.

What I suggest is downloading and trying to build your own kernel. Make sure to have those boot logs handy as they'll tell you what the distro's install kernel detected and you'll have to manually include them in the menus. The nice part is that, during install of the finished kernel, the old kernel will be backed up so if it doesn't boot, all you need to do is boot with your install CD/DVD, put the old kernel where it was, and run LILO so it knows. It's also possible to run the system off the install CD/DVD's kernel, which I had to do quite a bit when I was trying to get a new kernel running on my new laptop (if you think your desktop's hard, try a laptop: many distros won't even boot on them!).

I know it's not what everyone here is saying, but sooner or later you're going to want to do this. Done correctly you'll have a kernel that's dramatically smaller and your system will run noticeably faster, especially on older hardware.

Mike

Mike,

You missed the point ... he can't install because the kernel
on the CD/DVD he's booting with doesn't have support for his
chipset. First he's got to get Slackware on his hard drive,
then he can build a custom kernel.

Oops--that what I get for posting from work on the graveyard shift while fighting sleep: sorry.

Ok, reading back through, 2.6.24.5 doesn't have ICH10 support but at some later point the kernels do. So I guess somehow we have to get him a boot disk with a later kernel on it, right?

Mike

Kanja,

Have you made a decision as to what you would like to do next?

It would not be too hard to create a USB boot stick and add a custom
2.6.26 kernel to it. The Slackware installer will only install the
kernels from the official packages, but after installing Slackware,
and before you reboot, you can copy your custom kernel over and fix
LiLO to boot with it.

If you want to do this, post back and we'll go from there. If so, what
size USB flash disk do you have available to use?

Hey, sorry I had a busy day and didn't make it back. I've got a 4 gb stick floating around somewhere and several smaller ones (128, 256 and 1 gig), so if you think thats the best way I could set that up. I'm assuming I should stick with the biggest one under two gigs so I won't have to play around with the file system too much, right? I also have a usb HDD, and a mp3 player running rockbox that can connect via mini-usb. I *think* I can boot from any of them. Tonight I'll try to give the usb stick a go, but let me make sure that I've got the right idea.

1)Set up a boot stick using a current version of the kernel.
2)Boot and Install from the usb stick
3)Move the kernel over and add that to the LILO boot menu.
4)Profit.

Am I going to be able to just unpack the install cd, add an extra kernel image to the stick and choose to use that at boot? Or will I have to make a more custom bootloader like the one described at

http://alien.slackbook.org/dokuwiki/...ckware:usbboot

I've never booted from a usb stick before so this first part is a little bit of uncharted territory for me.

Thanks again!

You found the correct link. Use the 4GB stick and put everything
on it. If you see how to prepare that, get started. It's night
here, but in the morning I'll build you a 2.6.26 kernel using the
2.6.24.5-smp Slackware config, so it will work well for you; then
I'll post it for you to download.

Unless, of course, someone such as Alien Bob or another Slacker
comes to your rescue first.

Kanja,

Have you resolved this issue yourself? Or do you need more help?

Hey Bruce - thanks for checking in! I really appreciate it. I haven't had much time recently, so I haven't been able to finish up the boot loader yet - I've made a boot disk using the usbimage from the slackware cd, and while that boots it doesn't seem to have a kernel attached to it. finally got around to doing some of the steps from that wiki link last night, and I've managed to get most of the config files loaded on to the usb stick. Tonight and tomorrow I'm going to try and move the packages onto the disk and stamp it with syslinux. I should be able to test if it works or not if I can boot off the stick into the default kernel. I'll post it here once I get a working stamped image. So far I haven't hit anything that stopped me from moving on, and I think I might have found another thread with someone with a similar problem. So After this weekend I might need some more help, but I'd like to see if I can get it working.

Thanks again!

Okay, but the one thing you're missing is a kernel with support
for that ICH10 chipset South Bridge. If you don't have that, it's
not going to detect your SATA DVD drive.

I've emailed Pat asking if he Slackware-current will be getting a
newer kernel soon. If not, I'll build you a 2.6.26 kernel,and post
it somewhere on the intranut for you to download.

Sounds like you have a nice new box, and it's a shame not to have it
running a screaming Slackware install. :D

So, I finished the boot disk tonight, and trying it in my computer gave me some unexpected results. (It didn't work and spit out two pages of gibberish) I was upset, so I started poking around the bios, and I found an option to spoof the SATA as a AHCI drive - which works! It's slower to boot, and I don't think it's as good, so I'll need to update the kernel as soon as I can, but I've got a prompt at least now! Thank you so much for your help! Now time to start actually learning.

I run all my SATA disks in AHCI mode, mostly because in enables more features and it works with any SATA controller that supports AHCI.

Ok - I won't worry about it then. Keeping the drive in AHCI mode is easier anyway. I'm getting another strange problem now, although I'm not sure if it's related or not.

After using the computer for a little while the drive "dissapears". I've been trying to compile a kernel, and after a while of compiling the computer hangs for a few minuets, an error message pops up, and I'm dropped back to the console. After that, I'm unable to read anything from the drive, and any attempt to write is met with the message that it is a read only file system.
dmsg shows lots and lots of I/O errors, and smartctl changes it's output to show that theres no drive. Mount -l still claims that the drive is mounted and in RW mode though.

My first thought is that the drive is bad since it's brand new, but if that is the case why am I getting anything at all from it? I'm going to try swapping out the sata cable tonight, and see if that makes a difference. I know the most likely problem is that the drive is physically bad, but any ideas for things to try? I'm using Riserfs right now, should I reformat it to ext3? try umounting it and remounting it at boot?