Unable to install ANY distro

[cblouin]

Hi, I bought this new machine especially to run Linux and neither RH 7.0 or Mandrake 7.2 wants to install. I suspect the probleme is my HD 30 Go with a promise UMDA66 controller. I got linux RH7.0 to install using the image on the promise web site, but I cannot get it to boot at all without the install disk.
For Mandrake 7.2 (that support UMDA66), the DrakeX loop at create filesystem, asking for my SCSI card...
The UMDA66 HOWTO does not do anything for me.
Anyone have an idea of what is goign on?

[rafen]

Without knowing your hardware it's hard to make suggestions, but check your BIOS settings and see if your HD is set to LBA mode, and also try disabling your external cache before running the install and re-enable it after.

[idealego]

Run your drive in 33 mode, install linux and then if you want you can try to get 66 working but unless you're doing something exotic like ide raid your speed boost will <5% so I wouldn't bother.

[cblouin]

Thanks,
my hardware is AMD thuderbird 850 /Asus A7V motherboard / 128 Mb SDRAM Seagate barracuda 30Go ATA66 (Promise 66 controller)/ Asus v7100 GeForceII MX 32Mb / Panasonic R/RW 32X

I cannot see in my BIOS the hard drive by the way... though Mandrake 7.2 can detect it prior to looping. The only thing I have is my CD ROM as primary.

Also, downgrade to ATA33 sounds perfect to me if it fixes my problem, how do I do this? Its a BIOS thing? a software thing or a physical world intervention in the tower?

[rafen]

CD is primary? Primary IDE should be your hard drive, secondary IDE should be CD rom. Your BIOS should have a feature that says something like 'UDMA' or PIO mode; disable UDMA and you'll be at 33, at least my Award BIOS is set up that way. If you have a SCSI bus, you'll need to set your drive in BIOS as LBA, most likely. Have you got a manual for your motherboard?

[mdwatts]

Read the NHF on ATA-66 and also there's another at http://linux.nf/stepbystep.htm

[cblouin]

I figured out this problem today... at last. And I guess my exprience can be useful to other beginners:
I indeed have a ATA66 HD, but it was mounted on a ATA100 controller (and was seen as a SCSI for some reason in the BIOS). I armed myself with a screwdriver, changed the HD to the IDE primary slot and everything ran just fine.
Thanks all for helping.

Christian

[MrSndrs]

Originally posted by rafen:
Without knowing your hardware it's hard to make suggestions, but check your BIOS settings and see if your HD is set to LBA mode, and also try disabling your external cache before running the install and re-enable it after.

Why is LBA no good? I'm having problems installing Mandrake 7.2 on an old 850MB HD. Is LBA a problem with Linux? (I know 850MB is not enough, etc... Its just to play with.) My problem now is that I can't even get the installer to partition the drive. Is it LBA?

MrSndrs

[rafen]

LBA is good; I was asking him for unfo. LBA is probably going to be automatic in most modern BIOS's if you have a hard drive over a certain size, but LBA mode doesn't necessarily work on larger drives if the cylinder count goes above 1024; user defined is sometimes better for LILO.

[mdwatts]

If you had read the documentation at the website I posted, you could have fixed the boot problem by making a simple change to lilo.conf and your PC would be able to boot without using a boot disk.