Problem with Frugal install to CF

Forum: HD Install
Topic: Problem with Frugal install to CF
started by: ramsrc

Posted by ramsrc on April 25 2005,06:11

I am currently building a small fanless PC using the VIA EPIA ML mainboard, 512Mb RAM and a 512Mb Compact Flash card using an IDE to CF adapter. My intention was to install DSL to the flash using a frugal install.

Reading the documentation in the "getting started" directory it seems to be a question of creating two partitions on the CF with fdisk or cfdisk and then starting the frugal shell script. However, the partitioning is proving to be a problem. When I enter "fdisk /dev/hda", I get the error message "Unable to read /dev/hda".

I scanned the messages during bootup (from the live CD) and noticed the following error:

"Modprobe: Can't locate module block-major 2"

I am not sure if this is related or not.

Scanning the dmesg output there seems to be some relevant messages:

ide-scsi: hda: unsupported command in request queue (0)
end-request: I/O Error, dev 03:01 (hda), sector 4

Which is repeated multiple times.

I have tried the CF card in a USB card reader and it works perfectly - does anybody have an idea as to how I can get up and running. Sitting in the office all day with PC's whirring all around means a silent machine is a pretty great thing!

Posted by Caspar_s on April 25 2005,17:24

Hmm, have you tried installing it over usb first and then swapping it to the ide/cf adapter?

Posted by ramsrc on April 26 2005,05:17

Thanks Caspar_s - I managed to partition the CF that way, then discovered why I couldn't get the CF to work in the IDE adapter. The IDE port which is labelled "secondary" is actually the primary - figure that one out!

Anyway, apart from a bit of tweaking to do, I am now up and running. Thanks again!