Sorry about "Linux sux" post

[geddy]

Sorry guys about that post, this is just starting to piss me off. I've gotten 3 books on linux, which i read everyday, and spend hours trying different things. It gets frustraiting!

Anyway, Does anyone have any sugestions on what would be the most compatable version and distributor of linux to work with my configuration:
I have an Asus A7v w/ promise ultra ata 100 controllers, t-bird 900,sound blaster live,voodoo 3 AGP.

So far, Red Hat 7.0 doesnt work. It doesnt reconize my Hard drive under the ultra ata and im not advanced enough to edit the kernel. I just want to get this running. Should i buy another HD and plug into the normal IDE channel?

[TaeShadow]

I don't know about RedHat, but I know that many distributions allow you to make a bootdisk that supports unusual hardware. Slackware, which I use, includes a bootdisk on the CD that contains support for Ultra ATA 100 cards. If you have access to a Windows machine and a floppy disk, you can write the image to the floppy disk and then use that to boot the installation program instead of using the CD to boot.

[Malakin]

May I suggest waiting until Mandrake 8 goes final and trying that? I would imagine it has support for your hardware. It's currently in RC1 (release candidate 1) which means it shouldn't be much longer before they get the final version out.

[vvx]

I would suggest mandrake -- not my favorite, in fact if you change your video card you have the exact same setup as me (running debian here, and the procedure for that involves a kernel recompile). Now, if you were willing to recompile your kernel with support for the promise ata100 onboard, you could install any distribution. Linux is linux, if it works in one distribution it will work in the others, it just might be a little more work.

[Bully_Crist]

"Linux sux"?!?!?

yuo = fag0t :eek:

[bobarian]

Forget Red Hat. The current version is pretty awful compared to other distros. I would go with Mandrake, because it's easiest for newbies to set up and it's got incredible hardware support. And its a free download (if you want to download one gig :eek: )

[geddy]

i already d/led Mandrake. I got Red Hat to work by pluging in my HD to the normal IDE and disabling ATA in my Bios. Im using a a dual boot with windows and now i can get a Lilo prompt thing unless i use the boot disk and then i still cant get to a GUI, only a full screen shell.

[hardigunawan]

Is there any error message when you tried to go into GUI mode? If not....have you configured X? In RedHat, run "Xconfigurator" ( w/o quote)

If you have configured X during installation, it might be because you chose not to boot into GUI (there's an option during the installation abt this).

In order to auto boot to GUI, there must be a line in /etc/inittab:

"id:5:initdefault:" (w/o quote)

Most probably the one in your /etc/inittab is:

"id:3:initdefault:" (w/o quote)

[sincka]

http://www.geocities.com/ender7007/index.html

Visit the site... and how many times do ppl have to say to look for past posts... do a search man... you'll find much more info.

I managed to install/run Linux with my ata100 but the only catch is... I gotta use a bootdisk :(

Anyway, good luck man.

[bdg1983]

If you follow this section from the Ultra66 NHF, all should work.

You don't need to patch your hardware (third party controller from promise technologies), if you are running kernel 2.2.x. For 2.0.x I have no idea. I run 30 such boxes in our office, all of them identical, and using this Promise Technologies controller. All I had to do was give extra command line arguments to the kernel at boot time. To figure out the command line arguments, but with a linux boot/rescue floppy. When you reach the command prompt, do a
cat /proc/pci

You should see something like this in the output produced by this command, in addition to other junk.

Unknown mass storage controller: Promise Technology Unknown device (rev 1). Vendor id=105a. Device id=4d38.
Medium devsel. IRQ 5. Master Capable. Latency=64.
I/O at 0x1400 [0x1401].
I/O at 0x10f4 [0x10f5].
I/O at 0x10f8 [0x10f9].
I/O at 0x10f0 [0x10f1].
I/O at 0x1080 [0x1081].

Now Note down the values on those lines beginning with I/O, call them a, b, c, d (which in my case are 0x1400, 0x10f4, 0x10f8, 0x10f0). Ignore "e" (0x1080).

Then give the following command line argument to your kernel on the "lilo" prompt.

lilo: linux ide2=a,b+2 ide3=c,d+2

Which in my case is:
lilo: linux ide2=0x1400,0x10f6 ide3=0x10f8,0x10f2

You should see the drive through linux after that. To avoid having to type that command line arguments to kernel everytime, you can configure lilo to automatically do this for you. Just consult lilo doc about "append" option.



There's also other documentation here (http://linux.nf/stepbystep.htm) that I used to setup my Promise ATA100. Worked like a charm.