i am typing this from my computer using winXP.

i reboot computer with slackware CD, boot from CD

boot with bare.i

login as root

fdisk -l to see the list of drives that i can format (should be only one since i only have one hd)

nothing

fdisk /dev/hda

nothing

mounting hd's before fdisk doesnt work either cause its not a valid block something

so i try cfdisk

says cannot find disk.

so what should i do to make it recognize my hd so i can install this and get rid of windows for good!?

using sata.i didnt help....

i tried hdx from x=a to x=z and also with 1's and 2's and ****


im pissed

Are you sure you have an IDE hard drive ?

Slackware's installer is very very good. I like it better than any I've ever used.

If you have a SCSI harddrive try the following

Also, if you have a newer computer and your installing Slackware 11 you may want to try "huge26.s". It will support SMP kernels but you will have to read the doc's because you will have to install the modules from extra on disk 2 and initrd from the /boot directory.

Post back the people in this forum will help you.

im not that much of a noob but still thanks for helping;
yeah its ide, i built the computer so i know each and every single one of the components really well; the thing is that IDE0-3 channels are really sata, but the mobo (gigabyte-s3) calls em IDE0-3. IDE4 is the only ide channel where my hd is master and dvd is slave. so i thought, does this make it hdi or hde? but no nothing worked, and i followed verbatim instructions so i have no idea why it doesnt work. i am not using raid or anything so i dont see any complications, i have one hd on the only ide channel on mobo as primary master (im sure of this) and idk...idk
hda,b,c i went to z and it didnt work....
the thing is i have all the documentation in front of me i did nothing wrong and what do you mean by huge26.s and smp kernels? i built my computer less than a month ago, its all new, core 2 duo, p965 chipset, ddr2, etc...so maybe i should use that

again, thanks, hope you can help me more.

Never built my ownbox, but that setup looks strange. Since I don't know anything about setting up the cmos on a new box and would assume that the cabling is connected correctly I would not dare to try to help if that's the problem. It may be best since you've given us this info to put this in the Hardware forum and let those guys help you out to make sure it's not something with that.

All that being said, and this is just an idea, is to burn you a "GPARTED" live cd and boot with it. If you didn't know this is a partiting program which you could set up the harddrive so you wouldn't have to deal with fdisk or cfdisk and it should tell you what scheme that your computer is using like hdb, hdc, hde, etc.

Also, it is very nice tool to resize harddrives. So depending on how windows was installed you may need to make room for slackware.

I prefer to use gparted over fdisk it's a very nice tool.

Sorry, I missed part of the post so to answer you question on smp. Since you have a dual processor Pat V who build slackware has given us kernels that will take advantage of this. Most of the kernels he builds does not have smp enabled as a kernel option. On slackware 11 you have the option of booting from a very long list of prebuilt kernels and I if i remember correctly the huge26 is the only one with support for SMP (symmetric multi processing). Now, that being said and since you can alway upgrade later, let's just try to get you working and you can read up on some post about that later because it will not effect the install of slackware.

And you tried 'fdisk /dev/sda' to sdz ?

why would i? i know my drive is not scsi. again, i can see the drive RIGHT NOW, since my case side panel is open for better temps and more overclocking; i can see the IDE cable from channel 1 and master (end) into hd and jumper in master slot. and in BIOS, ide channel 4 master is HD so i know its working fine....

downloading gparted now.

I had a similar problem, so I used kernel "test26.s", after that just type cfdisk and you should see your partitions. Problem is that this kernel couldn't recognise my DVD drive where Slack is... So I couldn't install it. Maybe it'll work with you.

Hi,

First, what is the ide controller that is being used? If you have multiple channel ide then that can be the problem, depends on chipset. The 'gigabyte-s3' is not specific enough. Gigabyte uses the s3 class on several different MBs'.

You could try a Livecd like Qparted, Accelerated Knoppix or choose from list.

The Livecd would allow you to see what hardware can be recognized.

I would also suggest that you try the huge26 kernel to boot the Slackware install.

BTW, we are here to help. So edit for clarity and change the tone!

edit: to clarify & correct grammar

Remember, that Linux kernel accesses SATA drives through the SCSI interface layer, and hence SATA drives will be known as /dev/sda , /dev/sdb , etc... a "fdisk -l" will show that.

Eric

Hi,

Eric, I should have expanded with the link to the SATA-SUPPORT.TXT.

I've used different Gigabyte MBs' in some of my builds and sometimes the chipset has always been the culprit.

That's one reason to use a diagnostic livecd to look at the hardware.