Re: installing debian on SATA partition
> I recently tried installing Debian (sarge and woody) on a new 120gb
> SATA hard drive. After I set up all partitions, I could not install
> Debian (or Gentoo). When trying to install Debian, when I get to the
> parition step, it tells me something like, "No partitionable media
> found." I get the same error when I use the XP disk to partition the
> hard drive. I tried partitioning and then formatting the partitions,
> but that didn't work either. Right now, the computer has three
> partitions, with Windows XP on the first one.
It seems that the installer isn't seeing your SATA disk. To check this,
during the installation you can hit Alt-F2 or maybe Ctrl-Alt-F2 (sorry,
it's been years since I've done this, but I think it's one of those--
check the installer help right when it starts) to get to a command
shell. Then run one or more of the following commands, to find out what
disks and partitions the kernel sees:
# best: will show you everything in easily readable format:
sfdisk -l
# bare bones:
cat /proc/partitions
# check out each possible disk separately:
fdisk -l /dev/hda
fdisk -l /dev/sda # ... etc.
ls -l /proc/ide
cat /proc/scsi/scsi
One or more of these should show you what the kernel sees. Probably
it's not recognizing your SATA controller. If so, the only solution I
know is to go ahead and install Debian on a PATA drive, then once you're
up and running, build a custom kernel with the correct driver for your
SATA controller build in (not as a module). Then install that kernel to
boot from the SATA drive.
Good luck,
Andrew.
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