Bug#38073: need help installing
"freefood" <freefood@gateway.net> writes:
> This is my first time trying to install linux. I cannot get debian to
> recognize my hdd. When I boot from the resc1440.bin floppy the F4 screen
> says that I need to enter parameters for:
>
> IBM PS/1 or ValuePoint (IDE Disk) hd=<cly>,<heads>,<sectors>
> IBM Thinkpad floppy=thinkpad
>
> I tried booting with no parameters and and after I chose color monitor and
> qwerty keyboard it says that no hard drives were found and attempts to do a
> net install.
Ok.. it's not recognizing your hard drive controller.
I assume you have read
<URL:http://www.debian.org/releases/slink/i386/ch-rescue-boot.en.html>
and <URL:http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/BootPrompt-HOWTO.html>?
> architecture: i386
> model: Gateway Performance 500 (PIII-500)
> memory: 128M
>
> hdd: Western Digital Expert AC313500, EIDE, 13.5GB
> drive parameters (printed on drive label): LBA 26520480
> c,h,s = 26310, 16, 63 ???
> hdd controller: Ultra ATA/66
Hmm.. this is a pretty new machine. What is an 'Ultra ATA/66' ? Never
heard of that.
> I also tried setting hd=26310,16,63 which I believe to be the
> real params of my hdd. I also tried 16383,16,63 which is the max that drives
> are allowed to report. I also tried these values for the hda param with no
> success. (I don't understand the difference between hd and hda).
I believe 'hd' sets parameters on your disk controller, whereas 'hda'
is for setting them for the first IDE hard drive.
Since you have a modern computer, you definately should not have to
set the drive geometry manually. Any computer newer than 1997 should
generally be able to automatically detect drive geometry.
I would look elsewhere.
* what does the kernel say when booting? Does it detect your IDE
controller?
* is DOS/Windows able to boot?
* do you have expansion cards in your system, such as sound cards or
internal modems? Often, it makes sense to remove any
non-essential cards, since they can confuse Linux sometimes.
> I've tried
> using the rescue disk from both the slink and potato dists.
Um, they're the same at this point.
> Please help! I really want to get debian installed on my machine.
Keep trying!
> I used fips to partition my hdd to leave a 2GB partition at the end for
> linux.
Oh, um, this is probably not good. You probably need to have a
partition below cylinder 1024 in order to boot. See the Large disk
HOWTO at the LDP site.
--
.....Adam Di Carlo....adam@onShore.com.....<URL:http://www.onShore.com/>
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