hard drive detection for mandrake install

[misterhaan]

anybody know a way to get mandrake (9.0) installer past hard drive detection when it's getting stuck there?

[mdwatts]

Does the 'Expert Install Mode' give you the option to bypass the HD detection?

Really doubt it...

If you include your hardware specs and any other pertinent info, I'm sure someone may be able to assist you.

Tried the latest Mandrake 9.0 support/faq/bug reporting site?

[misterhaan]

i'm doing expert mode, it doesn't give me an option
i looked all over mandrake's site and can't find anything that seems to apply
hardware:
VXpro-II PCI Chipset
Pentium 166 MHz
Quantum Bigfoot CY (6.5 GB)
Seagate ST31276A (1.2 GB)
Western Digital W200 (20 GB)

i first tried it with the quantum and segate drives both in, then i tried them each by themselves, then tried the western digital. if i could skip hdd detection and give it the information manually i think it might help . . .
if i missed any hardware that might be related to this problem let me know

[JohnT]

Are any of the HD configured in your bios?

You have Primary and Secondary controllers on a 166? How are your HD's hooked up? Primary Master, Slave, Secondary Master. All the jumper pins set accordingly? Do you have EZ-Bios set-up for the Western Digital?

Here's a link in case you've overlooked something in your set-up..........................

http://cdfpc2.mps.ohio-state.edu/linux/install/hardware.html#hd

[dhughes]

I'm having a similar problem. I was trying to install Mandrake 6.5 just for fun but it's not been fun. It hangs after the first install screen. Then I went and found Mandrake 8.2, the newest I could find, but it does the same thing.
I have a post around here somewhere I'll look for that to update it.
In case you're curious:

I low level formated the drive..tried install - nope.
Partitoned it using a Win '98 Start-Up disk and Win '98 CD - nope
Formatted it using Win '98 - nope
"Drak", I think it is called, would hang at a black screen. The part after you press Enter to Install.
The HD is fine I installed XP on it to test it, then LLF'ed it.
So it something related to HD setup in the BIOS I'm guessing. I boot from the CD and I tried booting from the floopy just for the hell of it but ...nope.

[JohnT]

Like the previous questioneer, you too have not posted your hardware environment. Give us something to go on.

[dhughes]

I did in my other post is what I meant, I was just saying it is similar. I didn't want to hog his post.

If it helps:
Epox 8K5A2+
Athlon XP 2200+
1GB Samsung PC 2700 DDR
Fujitsu 6.4GB IDE on IDE 1 controller Master no other drives on it's cable
VIA KT333 chipset

[JohnT]

Originally posted by dhughes
I did in my other post is what I meant, I was just saying it is similar. I didn't want to hog his post.

If it helps:
Epox 8K5A2+
Athlon XP 2200+
1GB Samsung PC 2700 DDR
Fujitsu 6.4GB IDE on IDE 1 controller Master no other drives on it's cable
VIA KT333 chipset

Do you have Plug n Play disabled in the bios? Do you have DMA enabled?

[misterhaan]

i have a cdrom as master on the secondary controller, and the two hard drives on the primary controller.
plug and play is off, s.m.a.r.t. is on, and put the drives in lba 32-bit mode.
when i ran it with one drive it was primary master and cdrom stayed as secondary master.
no ez-bios because the bios seemed to support it just how it was

[JohnT]

Originally posted by misterhaan
i have a cdrom as master on the secondary controller, and the two hard drives on the primary controller.
plug and play is off, s.m.a.r.t. is on, and put the drives in lba 32-bit mode.
when i ran it with one drive it was primary master and cdrom stayed as secondary master.
no ez-bios because the bios seemed to support it just how it was

Try your cdrom as slave on Primary and your other HD as Secondary Master. Don't forget to change jumpers.

[Saptech]

I may have bad cd burns for MDK 9.0 but I can't seem to get it installed cleanly. First off, it try to use my whole 40gb Maxtor HD. I've tried default & expert installed and it claims not to see free space and wants to install to my C & D drives, which has Win XP and a FAT32 partition.

Someone else with broadband connection burned the cd for me so I didn't check the checksum, but it will boot from the cd drive without problems.

Exactly how many discs does it take to install MDK 9.0? I just got the first one only.

Any ideas/suggestions?

Thnx.

[JohnT]

I did a minimum install and it used the first disk and a few off the second. Didn't touch the third disk at all.

[misterhaan]

Try your cdrom as slave on Primary and your other HD as Secondary Master. Don't forget to change jumpers.

okay, i'm giving that a try . . .

[misterhaan]

that didn't seem to help :(

this time i managed to write down this error that prints twice at the beginning of the installation, right after "starting second stage install"
unable to open "/proc/bus/pci/devices"
you may have passed a wrong argument to the "-p" option.
fopen() sets errno to: No such file or directory

[JohnT]

Originally posted by misterhaan
that didn't seem to help :(

this time i managed to write down this error that prints twice at the beginning of the installation, right after "starting second stage install"


Do you have onboard sound and video? What kind of cards do you have on your board?

[misterhaan]

there is onboard sound -- "3d sound pro"
no onboard video . . .
i put in an stb velocity 128 pci and a creative modem blaster pci
then my two isa slots have a 3com etherlink III isa (two cards--one in each slot)

[JohnT]

Try pulling everything out but video card and see if that gets it past.

[misterhaan]

wow, i'm surprised i didn't think of that--i always did that when trying to set up a computer with windows . . .

anyway it still does the same thing, but tomorrow i'll try a different video card and see if that helps

[JohnT]

Try disabling your sound also if you've got the doc's or know how anyway. Might do some research on your board and see what you can come up with as to how it stacks up against the RH hardware compatibility list. Also if you have Win still running you might want to take a look at memory addresses for your ISA and PCI bridges and see if they coincide with bios settings or possibly IRQ conflicts.

[misterhaan]

disabled onboard sound . . . switched video card . . . still same error message and hangs at hard drive detection

thanks for all the suggestions, even though nothing has gotten it to work quite yet :) i'll keep trying as long as there are more ideas!

[JohnT]

I think this is where you'll need to pass extra parameters to the kernel. Upon boot there is the option to do this, this is out of my range,but I'll look to see what I can find on it.

[misterhaan]

thanks i appreciate it! :)

[misterhaan]

whoa i figured it out!

when the install comes up with that press enter to install or f1 for options, you hit f1, then f2 gives you advanced options and one of them is noauto, which got it past checking for my hard disks!

at the f1 prompt you enter what kind of install you want (linux/expert/vgalo/etc...) followed by a space and noauto.

expert noauto

[JohnT]

Never been there , but good info to know. How's the install progressing? I'd be interested how it does when bypassing detection. Don't forget to make your bootdisk.

[misterhaan]

well it went through the install just fine in text mode (i have 48 meg ram so it doesn't want to do a graphical install) but i couldn't detect a network card. of course it had something where i could enter information like irq and a couple other things, but i didn't know what to put there. so i couldn't get the network cards to work just yet. there are two 3com etherlink iii isa 3c509b cards in there. the noauto switch didn't seem to make much difference other than letting it get past hard drive detection . . .