slack 8 and ide controller card problem

[paully1]

I have a Promise ultra100 tx2 ata/100 controller and I'm trying to install slack 8 but I cant seem to get it going. I read the NHF and used the ide2=a,b+2 ide3=c,d+2 but it just keeps saying no image found. Then it says press tab for list and it shows
ramdisk drive2 mount
I tried the 2.4.5 kernel and the 2.2.19 or whatever the default is. the 2.2 I used ata100.i and 2.4.5 i tried bare.i both with the same result. My cdrom and burner are on the second ide on the mobo if that makes a difference. They are detected fine. Any ideas?

thanks
paul

[bdl]

I'm betting you're using the 'linux' image as it shows in the NHF, Slackware uses 'ramdisk' as it's kernel image name, so you'd have to pass the 'ide2=' argument to ramdisk rather than linux. I'd ignore this, however, and just use ata100.i image. When it gives you the boot: prompt, type ata100.i and hit enter. That should do it. Luck!

[paully1]

Originally posted by bdl:
<STRONG>I'm betting you're using the 'linux' image as it shows in the NHF, Slackware uses 'ramdisk' as it's kernel image name, so you'd have to pass the 'ide2=' argument to ramdisk rather than linux. I'd ignore this, however, and just use ata100.i image. When it gives you the boot: prompt, type ata100.i and hit enter. That should do it. Luck!</STRONG>

Tried ata100.i at the boot prompt but it said no image found. I copied the image onto the floppy but says no image found.

Thanks
paul

[bdl]

Ok let's backup a second here. What are you using to boot into the install? Floppy? Which one? For some reason I was thinking you're booting via CDROM, which you should be able to do, BTW.

[paully1]

Originally posted by bdl:
<STRONG>Ok let's backup a second here. What are you using to boot into the install? Floppy? Which one? For some reason I was thinking you're booting via CDROM, which you should be able to do, BTW.</STRONG>

I'm booting from floppy. I've never been able to make my cd rom boot. I only have one floopy, fd0. I'd love to be able to boot from cdrom.

[ 27 January 2002: Message edited by: paully1 ]

[WCox]

Check your bios and see if the possibility of changing the boot up order is there. The newer bio's have that capability. If you can change it to boot from the cdrom, press F2 to see a list of boot options with Slackware 8.0. I chose scsi245.s to boot with and it was able to see my ATA 100 ide controller. Installation of Slackware was then a cinch. Hope this helps.

[paully1]

Originally posted by WCox:
<STRONG>Check your bios and see if the possibility of changing the boot up order is there. The newer bio's have that capability. If you can change it to boot from the cdrom, press F2 to see a list of boot options with Slackware 8.0. I chose scsi245.s to boot with and it was able to see my ATA 100 ide controller. Installation of Slackware was then a cinch. Hope this helps.</STRONG>

I got it to work, was a dumb mistake on my part. Got it installed but know I have another hurdle. I rebooted with my new lilo bootdisk and it couldnt mount the kernel did a kernel panic. I reckon that aint good!

thanks
paul

[bdl]

Hokay. My bad. Now, if you're not already using it, you need to be using the 'ata100.i' floppy image, which you can find on your CD in the bootdsks.144 directory. If you don't know how to create a floppy from that image, check the README file in the same directory. Once the floppy is done, reboot and just hit ENTER at the prompt.

[bdl]

Originally posted by paully1:
<STRONG>I got it to work, was a dumb mistake on my part. Got it installed but know I have another hurdle. I rebooted with my new lilo bootdisk and it couldnt mount the kernel did a kernel panic. I reckon that aint good!

thanks
paul</STRONG>

Hmmm. All is not lost. You *should* be able to use the ata100.i floppy you created (you did create the floppy didnt you?? ) by passing the 'mount' argument to the image at the 'boot:' prompt like so:

boot: ramdisk mount root=/dev/hda1 ro

Which will point the ata100 image at your root partition, shown here as /dev/hda1. Substitute your own, of course. The 'ro' mounts it read-only as should be.


You can also create a bootdisk if you're a little patient. What I normally do is use the installation set again, get back to a prompt and mount your root partition to a temporary location (let's say /mnt). Example root partition on hda1.

$ mount -t ext2 /dev/hda1 /mnt


Once you've mounted it you can create the floppy quick 'n dirty like with the 'dd' command. Make sure you remove the boot/root floppy and put in a blank one (or the one you just created during install that doesnt work).

$ dd if=/mnt/vmlinuz of=/dev/fd0

Then you have to point the image to your root partition with 'rdev'. You must replace the example partition shown below (/dev/hda1) with your own root partition.

$ rdev /dev/fd0 /dev/hda1

Reboot with the new floppy.

Once you get into Linux, you can either create another boot floppy if you want or install LILO, etc. Luck!

[ 27 January 2002: Message edited by: bdl ]