Mandrake 10 Installation Problem

[NeoSeeker 0]

I've got an Asrock K7S8E+ mobo and a Maxtor 160GB SATA hard drive, just after I accept the agreement on the installation, I am asked if I have any other devices, I say no and continue, and I am then told that there are no valid devices found to create new filsystems, this could be a hardware problem. If I choose yes to having any other devices, I've tried every driver on the list and I still get an error or the same message. I'm sure it must be the Sis chipset on my motherboard and my SATA hard drive. Does anybody know what I should do? Is there some kind of 3rd party disk I need to use before the linux installation to tell it that I am using a SATA drive, like I needed when I installed Windows XP?

[martouf 0]

Hi NeoSeeker, and welcome..

 

You have bravely ventured forward to the very leading edge of supported storage

technology.

 

SATA support is an area of ongoing development.

 

It would help to know which distro you're loading before anyone can really guide

you specifically.

 

 

[NeoSeeker 0]

hehe, oops. I'm trying to install Mandrake Linux 10 Offcial, x86 version. Forgot to add that, silly me. Oops, forgot to say thankyou in advance if anybody can help me

[TimMadDammit 0]

Unfortunately the problem is that Mandrake 10 (and i think the linux kernel 2.6 in general) doesn't support SATA devices. So while you have a nifty new hard drive, linux can't see it. You'll have to either get an IDE hard drive, or find a distro that supports SATA, if such a one exists.

[martouf 0]

If you read through this document, I think you'll see that unless you have

the Intel ICH5/6 SATA hardware, you're going to have to delve into building kernel modules.

 

The SATA document lists only beta support for your SATA hardware, and the time

reference of May 2004. Mmmm, fresh code. Yummy!

 

As TimMadDammit says, you're going to have to consider adding a plain IDE interface

and IDE disk to your system to load a distro. It's that or build a custom install

disk on another system.

 

 

[zero0w 0]

I can confirm the issue is mostly about SATA.

 

I am using the same motherboard but with IDE harddrive.

And it has been working rock solid for 5 months in Mandrake 9.2/10.

[danleff 0]

Boy, I wish I had a sata drive to try this on!

 

The usual disclaimer applies, ..don't try this on your main production system. Again, I have not tried this, but if one is ambitious, and you want to try it..realizing that you may muck up the works on your XP system...

 

The first issue is the partitioning scheme in Mandrake using the 2.6 series kernel. Make sure that you have partitioned the drive the way that you want it BEFORE installing Mandrake, with a utility like PartitionMagic. There are issues with allowing the Mandrake install utility to partition the free space or actually doing the partitoning during the install, next to Windows XP (NTFS).

 

If this is not your main and only system, try the following;

 

1. Boot the Mandrake install cd

 

2. When you get the main menu screen, press F1 for more options

 

3. Type in linux noapic. If you want to do an expert install, expert noapic.

 

4. Allow the install to continue until the partitioning menu comes up. Choose the option to manually assign the partitions (expert).

 

5. Tell Mandrake where to assign root (/), swap and home, depending on what partitions that you set up for Mandrake beforehand.

 

6. Make sure that you choose Grub as the bootloader. This allows you to alter the boot options at the Grub menu "on the fly."

 

The problem is now passing the boot options to grub to allow a proper boot for sata.

 

7. re-boot the system to the Grub menu.

 

8. Make sure that the Mandrake option is highlighted (I think "linux" it should be the first option). Hit "e" to enter edit mode.

 

8. Make sure that the kernel= line is highlighted and press "e" again.

 

9. At the end of the kernel boot line, add acpi=off noapic, making sure that you leave a space between the last entry and acpi=off noapic. Also, there is a space between acpi=off and noapic.

 

10. Hit the enter key to allow the entry to take effect.

 

11. Hit the "b" key and see if the system boots.

 

If it works, you then need to edit menu.lst once you are in Mandrake to add the options in step # 9 and make them stick.

 

For a reference, see

 

This link

[NeoSeeker 0]

Thanks for the info Danleff, problem is I can't get past the part after accepting the agreement because my SATA isn't recognised. I'll try anything because I have other computers so it doesn't matter if Windows will get messed up. Ironically I just built this new computer with a big HD so I would have alot of space to run Linux and a few versions of Windows, and I had even bought an ATA hd, but took it back to buy a SATA :S I'd been running MDK 9.0 on another of my machines, and liked it so much that it was one of the reasons I wanted to get a bigger hd/new computer to put it on So for the moment I guess i'm just going to have to stick with Mandrake Move & just install MDK 10 on my laptop for the moment until a new release supports SATA properly

[zero0w 0]

See if this discussion can help you:

 

http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=131949

[Whiskers 0]

What is this APIC thing that was mentioned, I didnt do a no apic this install, but, I disabled it in the bios before a previous install because I read it can cause hangs in the system. The question is that, what is APIC and what does it do?