1st time user has HD issue

Forum: HD Install
Topic: 1st time user has HD issue
started by: LeoTheComm

Posted by LeoTheComm on Jan. 14 2006,03:47

Having a hard time getting DSL to install to an HD. cfdsik shows the drive I would like to install to (/dev/hda) as well as my second disk (/dev/hdb) The problem is cfdisk cannot read the partition table of EITHER disk, and shows both of them as free space. Tried to wipe out /dev/hda and start fresh but always get locked up when I try to write.

Here's the tail of my dmesg:

fat: bogus logical sector size 0
vfs: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev 03:01
fat: bogus logical sector size 0
vfs: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev 03:02
fat: bogus logical sector size 65535
vfs: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev 03:40
apm: BIOS version 1.2 Flags 0x03 (Driver version 1.16)

My cdrom drive is /dev/hdd and is alone on ide 2. hda and hdb are on the primary.

Anyone care to take a stab?

Posted by skaos on Jan. 14 2006,16:19

I think < http://www.toms.net/rb/ > comes with fdisk, maybe you could try fdisk instead of cfdisk. Also, are you running cfdisk as root?

Posted by LeoTheComm on Jan. 14 2006,17:55

[QUOTE]I think < http://www.toms.net/rb/ > comes with fdisk, maybe you could try fdisk instead of cfdisk. Also, are you running cfdisk as root?

This is what I've done so far:

Initial install was tried with a 32mb fat partition marked bootable with command.com and cdrom drivers on it (hda1) 500mb ext2 (hda2) 500 swap (hda5) fat was setup using windows fdisk, ext2 and swap were made with slackware 10.2. Boots to lilo (installed from slackware 10.2) on the MBR

sudo su cfdisk shows the entire drive as one big open space with NO partitions. OK, pull out the slackware disk again and wipe /dev/hda clean of it's partitions

Again sudo su cfdisk shows one open space. Attempt to make partitions leads cfdisk and gui lock (does the same from console)

/dev/hdb1 is a 60gb reiser drive with no other partitons. It also is reported in sudo su cfdisk as one unpartioned space.

So my conclusion is sudo su cfdisk cannot read the partition tables on my setup.

cdrom boots as /dev/hdd I'm going to try to switch cdrom to /dev/hdc to see if anything different happens. Somthing tells me having the cdrom as /dev/hdc........

Posted by LeoTheComm on Jan. 14 2006,18:21

Here's another error I've found in dmesg, WAY near the top:

autoconfig devices
cant locate module block-major-2

Posted by cbagger01 on Jan. 16 2006,05:35

I get this error on PCs that don't have a floppy drive attached. Do you have a floppy drive?

Posted by LeoTheComm on Jan. 16 2006,14:36

How DID you know that? As a matter of fact, the machine in question does'nt have a floppy? Any known work arounds for that?

Posted by Guest on Jan. 16 2006,19:13

I have the same problem as mentioned on first post, but i have a floppy drive. I also have two hard drives and cd rom hooked same way as mentioned before. Is there a solution for this thing?

Posted by LeoTheComm on Jan. 16 2006,20:41

Tried putting in a floppy drive, and it did not help the situation. My best guess at this point is the early sis chipset is causing some problems, but that's only a guess.

Posted by cbagger01 on Jan. 17 2006,04:07

The floppy drive error is a red herring.

That specific error message is harmless.

I don't know much about the SIS chipset, but I do know that I once tried to boot knoppix on a SIS-based MB and the integrated SIS NIC kept dropping out after a few minutes of heavy activity so a flaky hard drive controller wouldn't be a shock to me.

Try googling your chipset and keyword "knoppix" and see if you can learn anything about problems and/or solutions.

Posted by Guest on Jan. 17 2006,13:46

I have also some sis stuff (graphics card and some other things) on my computer, so it might be the problem.