"" This close to giving up on slackware
 

I am a relatively new Linux user, been toying around with fedora for a while now.

I decided to move to slackware about a week ago, and it has been a complete nightmare.

Hardware:

AMD64 2800+
WD 200GB SATA hard drive
NVIDIA GeForce Fx 5500
Dynex external USB floppy
AOPEN CD-RW/DVD-ROM


First off: Everything works fine in Fedora. I have not had a single problem with fedora anywhere.

I've been trying to install slackware for about a week, and i cannot find anyway to get the install to work. The basic problem (as far as i can tell) is that my hard drive is not recognized. Sometimes the cdrom is recognized, sometimes it isn't. I've tried Bonecrusher's slackware sata iso, it does not work. I've tried making floppy boot ad root disks, when i get to where it asks to switch to the root disk, the root disk is never recognized, it just brings a bunch of "end_request I/O error" messages for sectors 0-7, repeatedly. I've checked the md5s on everything, none of them were bad.

I'm out of ideas, and there doesn't seem to be a single person out there capable of helping me. A few people have mentioned compiling my own kernel, but none have given me any useful help on how to make one that will work. I've thought about copying the working kernel that fedora is using from my hard drive, but i'm not sure how to do that.

Does anyone have any ideas, or am i jsut up s**t creek without a paddle on this one?

edit: SOrry if this seems impatient or rude, i'm just frustrated with the difficulty of getting the SATA to work. I have read through the other threads, but i haven't found a solution in there yet.

Is it possible to run the install on a compiled 2.6 kernel, with the sata_sis driver included (that is my IDE controller's driver, or at least, the one fedora uses for it.)?

There might be something physically wrong with your hdd.
Go to the manufactures website, and see if you can find som tool to fix it with. If you can post your /var/log/dmesg, it might help a bit.

BUt thats jsut it, i've had no problems with either Fedora or windows (well, other than the fact that it is windows, but no hard drive related problems). I didn't have any problems until i tried to install slackware.

The best i can figure, is that kernel 2.4 does not come with the right driver for my controller (sata_sis is the one fedora uses, loaded it automatically on install). I would think there is a way to build a 2.4 kernel with this driver, and then add that to the install iso, similar to what bonecrusher did. But i can't get any information on how to do this.

Here is the section from var/log/dmesg that deals with the hard drive:

SCSI subsystem initialized
libata version 1.10 loaded.
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:05.0[A] -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 169
ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xE300 ctl 0xE402 bmdma 0xE700 irq 169
ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xE500 ctl 0xE602 bmdma 0xE708 irq 169
ata1: dev 0 cfg 49:2f00 82:346b 83:7f61 84:4003 85:3468 86:3c41 87:4003 88:007f
ata1: dev 0 ATA, max UDMA/133, 390721968 sectors: lba48
ata1: dev 0 configured for UDMA/133
scsi0 : sata_sis
ata2: no device found (phy stat 00000000)
scsi1 : sata_sis
Vendor: ATA Model: WDC WD2000JD-22H Rev: 08.0
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 05
SCSI device sda: 390721968 512-byte hdwr sectors (200050 MB)
SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back
SCSI device sda: 390721968 512-byte hdwr sectors (200050 MB)
SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back
sda: sda1 sda2 sda3 sda4 < sda5 sda6 >
Attached scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0

(thats from fedora)

granted.. this isn't quite so much of a fix... but umm... Slackware isn't even a 64-bit port yet... so you're running a 32-bit OS on the 64-bit processor you spent so much money on?? If you're happy with Fedora.. then stick with it... you'll know when it's time to change.. If you're looking to try a more 'hardcore' distro.. or whetever you want to call it.. and that's why you choose slackware.... perhaps look into FreeBSD... it has a 64-bit port.. and it's a terrific OS... very fast, very stable, excellent package management... I believe they are working in a 64-bit version of Slack, but it's not available yet... the choiceis yours, as always...

Which version of Slackware are you using? The 2.4.29 kernel includes the sata_sis modue, which is part of "slackware-current". If you are using Slackware 10.0 (kernel 2.4.26), it doesn't have that module.

Slackware-current also includes an sata.i kernel; you might try specifying that for your installation bootdisk.

--Barry

Slackware is not for everybody
 

Since you've got such hardware you ought to use a 64bit distro, I would recomend using mandrake 64bit, it has all the configuration files slack has, but it also has some great gui tools. I also thought that I wanted to become a hardcore slack user, and I thought slack was the ideal way to learn linux fast. You do not jump off a bridge to learn to fly, if you'd like to struggle then try debian, then at least you'll have a light in the end of the tunnel with apt:P

I did try the sata.i and it didn't work. I'm not using slakcware, i'm trying to install it.

Its not about learning linux.

I'm using linux as a programming platform for building stellar computer models, particularly of stellar convection. That may not mean anything to you but i have to be able to simulate 3 nonlinearly related unknowns, given by 3 very nonlinear differential equations for 7.2 million positions.

And thats the easy version.

Its about performance. I need something that i can configure to my needs, and will then stay out of my way. I don't want mandrake and its gui tools, gui tools suck up too many cpu cycles. I need something that will do what i want it to, when i want it to, and nothing else, because i need to squeeze maximum performance out of limited system resources. From what i've read about distros, and heard from users, that means slackware.

Going to a 64 bit distro isn't going to do me any good if that distro is sucking up the extra efficiency. From what i understand volkerding chose not to port a 64 bit version because the performance increase was not great enough to justify it. I'm currently using the 64 bit version of fedora, it works for what i'm doing now, because i'm just writing code, not really running it yet. But within a few months i will need to squeeze as much juice as possible from my system, and thats what i'm looking for.

Then again, i recommend FreeBSD... it's pretty widely accepted (and I'll probably get flamed) that FreeBSD will outperform any other operating system running on equivalent hardware,period. And as for the 64-bit version using the extra cycles... YOU WANT IT TO!!!!!! If you're OS isn't taking advantage of 64-bit computing, neither is any application you develop/run on it!!! Use the 64-bit FreeBSD 5.3...

The only issue I forsee with that one is that you may have to tweak a slight bit of your code to work under FreeBSD, but that's only a 'maybe'. FreeBSD does have a superb linux compatibility layer, with no performance degredation.

P.S. - For doing doing those types of Processor pounding mathmatical equations, why on earth are you using a single-processor machine?? Is this something you're doing in your spare time? If you are working for a company doing this, I might suggest you tell them to get you a quad-proc machine, or at least a dual-proc... anyways...my two cents.. good luck with your programming, sounds like it'll be pretty cool once it's working...

You say you tried the sata.i kernel. How did you try it, via a floppy bootdisk or CDROM? That kernel is compiled with support for the sata_sis driver, so it should work fine. However, if you're using the floppy in your USB floppy drive the floppy drive is most likely your problem, not sata. All of the USB support in the sata kernel is modular, meaning that you must first load the modules required to bring up the USB support before you'll be able to access the USB floppy. The reason the first disk works and none of the others do is because PC's BIOS is handling access to the USB device until the linux kernel loads and takes over. The easiest thing to do, if you must use the floppies, would be for you to download the kernel source and the .config for the sata.i kernel. The config file is available on the slackware mirrors in slackware-current/kernels/sata.i/config. Then rebuild the kernel compiling in whatever USB support your need and use that kernel on the bootdisk. You'd may also need to do some editing to the syslinux.cfg file on the disk, as well the /etc/rc.d/rc.S script on the install.1 disk, in order to switch from using /dev/fd0 to /dev/sda, since the USB floppy will be recognized differently than a standard floppy drive.

Alternatively, you could add the sata kernel to the CDROM iso that you are using and avoid the USB floppy headache altogether. Either way, you'll want to use the same kernel version for your custom kernel as whichever version of slackware you're installing uses. If you don't then you'll need to either make a package for all the kernel modules you use or go with a non-modular kernel.

Well, there's not much left for me to say, now. :) DaHammer pretty much covered it. Nice catch on the USB floppy driver, btw.

I agree that Slackware has the potential to be the leanest, most customizable, stay-out-of-the-way choice.
A caveat, though, is that I have not used FreeBSD, so I can't comment on it, either positively or negatively, except to say that I have heard very good things about it from people I respect.

--Barry

Actually i'm a student, so this is done on my personal machine. I would love a multi processor system, but i can't quite afford that.

Thanx for that advice, i'll look into FreeBSD then. My comment about the OS sucking up cycles was referring to mandrake and fedora with all the gui interfaces and that it doesn't do me any good to have those sucking up cpu cycles.

dahammer: I've used both the bootdisk and bonecrusher's cdrom, neither of them worked, both had the sata.i kernel. i hadn't thought of the USB floppy being a problem, but the CD didn't work either, so thats not the only problem.

I know it's been a while for this thread, but...

What version of slack did you try? 10.0 worked for my sata drive, but 10.1 does not. curious. Neither did the latest arch linux.

Neither one has worked for my sata drive.

if you want performance, you can try getoo. you can compile all, for your hardware configuration. all at size of your machine

You can always stick with what works. You said Fedora worked flawlessly. Try another Fedora or Red Hat based distro. If you are looking for more performace try the FC3 XFCE packages. If it's not broke, don't fix it. With time your technical knowledge will increase. Give it another whack when Slack 11 comes out.