Laptops :: Can't detect hard drive on Sony Vaio N505VX

Hi,

I'm trying to install DSL off a CD onto a Sony Vaio N505VX. It boots wonderfully with the boot options "ide2=0x180,0x386 nopcmcia" (stolen from a SUSE install howto), but then can't detect the hard drive. Running "fdisk /dev/hda" returns "Unable to open /dev/hda".

I can install SUSE 10.1 on the machine, and that identifies, partitions, and installs on /dev/hda.

After booting DLS, cat /proc/interrupts shows ide0 at irq14. And dmesg says:

hda: attached ide-disk driver.
hda: host protectected area => 1
had: 39070080 (200004 MB) w/1860KiB Cache, CHS=2432/255/63
Partition check:
hda: hda1 hda2 <>
ide: late registration of driver

Any suggestions on where I go from here?

Thanks,
Dan

Ah! Just needed to boot with the "dma" option.

Dan

Hm, that's only partly true. I can see /dev/hda if I boot into runlevel 2, but not runlevel 5. The only difference in the rc.d scripts seems to be calling S48ppp_move in runlevel 5, which modprobes some mouse stuff before calling chat scripts. Could this be the reason it can't see /dev/hda, or am I on the wrong track?

Thanks,
Dan

original here.