Hello everyone,

I have a computer running windows. I want to install mandrake linux 9.2 from my hard disk (western digital 120 GB SATA). When trying with boot disk it reports that it can't find hard disk. And that it can't find the right driver. The partition with linux is a fat32 patition.

Can anyone tell me how I can install the driver and where I can find it. I don't have any experience with linux

Thank

Hey Stuart,

What motherboard or to be more precisely what SATA-chip are you using ?
Either way, it'll be complicated to install on a SATA-drive straight if it is not deteced during your installation. Is the drive containg Windows (just to see that he BIOS is set up correctly).
Do you have a "standard" IDE-drive that you could use for an initial installation ?
In that case you would install the standard version first and then install a new kernel (2.6.3) which includes support for SATA (in particular for Promise and Silicon Image chips). It is not THAT complicated after all (at least if you are experienced with PCs in general)

Regards
Stephan

When installing mandrake I press F1 for more options then type expert in and it asks me for the floppy with the drivers on for my SATA hardrive, can someone provide with these drivers and also how to put them on a floppy, im not experienced with linux so step by step insructions would be great.

Cheers,
Jack

Thank you "gromer" for clear answer.

Now I´ll install my SuSE 9.0 on single SATA drive, prepare new kernel (2.6.3 - with SIL3112, RAID and ReiserFS) and switch my system to it.Then I´ll configure software RAID and we´ll see :-)
I´ll inform you about the progress.

My first little contribution for this great community:
- Before you start OS installation on SATA HDD connected to SIL3112A controller (on ASUS A7N8X-E DeLuxe mother board) , don´t forget to set you BIOS boot sequence to:

FIRS BOOT DEVICE - CD-ROM (or FLOPPY)
SECOND BOOT DEVICE - DISABLED
THIRD BOOT DEVICE - DISABLED
OTHER BOOT DEVICE - ENABLED

...the SIL3112A (and its drives) is detected under "OTHER BOOT DEVICES" and it won´t work without ENABLED selected...and maybe its the same on other mother boards and controllers.

Dear Vosa,

Don't forget to include RAID (1 and 2) support into your new kernel, otherwise you would need an initialial ram disc to get things to work (initrd) if you want to boot from your softraid.
Setting up a Softraid is not that simple. Again, I strongly reommend to do an initial installation on a standard IDE drive (unless you can do a SOftraid-install with your YaST or something similar) which can be replaced quickly after the Softraid and the new kernel are prepared.
If somone needs a howto let me know.

And dear Jwarder,

What happens if you do NOT press F1. Does it recognize your drive then. I guess that it should since the Mandrake 10 beta contains the kernel 2.6.3rc2 (actually 2.6.3 is already released). All you have to ensure is that it is using this kernel. If this doesn't work I STRONGLY discourage the use of a proprietray driver. Whenever you want to do a kernel update it will NOT work anymore and you can no longer access your drives. Furthermore it is unclear if the method of access is compatibel with standard Linux methods. This means that in case that you want to use a new kernel wich now support access to your drives you might not be able to access them properly.

So again, if you cannot install your system with non-proprietrary drivers in the first place, do a setup on an old IDE drive (8-10 GB is MORE then enough).

Install your system on an IDE drive and configure as desired (no need for Softraid yet). I recommend that you use LILO (not GRUB even though it looks better) because it is not so good in supporting Softraid for boot.
Then get the lastest STABLE 2.6 kernel.
unpack it to /usr/src (tar -jxf kernel2.6.x.tar.bz2)
create a Softlink called "linux" to the new directory e.g. linux2.6.3
using: ln -s /usr/src/linux2.6.3 linux
cd /usr/src/linux/include
There you may have to do a new softlink
ln -s asm-i386 asm
go back: cd ..
now do a "make xconfig" and
configure it using for use with your chipsets (SATA (which is under SCSI something), RAID support. Don't forget to setup your system and Processor type.
Those of you who do not have a fairly recent distro need to get the new kernel mdoule support before continuing.

A well I can only write a howto for Debian/KNOPPIX. Anyone interested ??

So, here´s result of my attempt to install SuSE 9 (out of box) to single SATA drive and upgrade of kernel to version 2.6.2:

- automatic installation chosen (YaST)
- no problems during detection of my SATA drives (designated as hde, hdg)
- 3 partitions created on hde (swap, /, /data)
- software pick set to "minimal system", then added necessary packages like mc, binutils, make, xfree86, fvwm ...
- boot loader GRUB selected
- installation finished without any problem, booting the system without any problem
- during booting time indicated some problems with chipset, SATA controller, DMA (dmesg) but system is running OK

- kernel 2.6.2 upacked, configured without any changes except of adding RAID 1 support, ReiserFS support, SATA SIL3112 support.
- compiled, added to GRUB and boot....
- some services (1-2) are "FAILED" (eth0 is one of them)
- boot log looks better then with the old kernel
- hdparm shows no problem on /dev/hde, performance is 43MB/s

My next step is going to be to configure software RAID1 over both hard drives + playing with the kernel configuration + reading tons of manuals

Dear Vosa,

Your eth0 failed because it was setup by SuSE during install.
I recommend to include the driver for your eth0 in the kernel and to recompile.
There is a file in /etc which contains the specific setting for your eth0 and if they are incompatible with your new settings you have adjust them.

yours stephan

And remember you control modules in 2.6 from modprobe.conf rather than modules.conf.

Forget trying to find the different patches and auxiliary b.s. to get Linux to run,

just tell of the LATEST GREATEST DISTRIBUTION, with the latest tried and tested kernel THAT SUPPORTS SATA consistently

I go to this site
http://linuxiso.org/

and it looks like a candy store

while here is where I read stories about what each flavor tastes like.

We all just want the one that tastes like "lets-Linux-run-on my PC
s hard drive" the first time we insert the CD . . .

http://linuxiso.org/


Does anyone here have a clue?

Any major distro (mostly upcoming distros) supporting the 2.6 kernel will. Also other comercial distros (AFAIK) do support S-ATA drives (Xandros and RHEL come to mind)... Then again what do you want? in the free front FC2 Test1 with its 2.6.1 kernel may or may not have good S-ATA support, and there's the problem about the different chipsets fandango and standard implementations...

Dear studpenguin,

Well knowing how many different ditros there are doesn't solve the problem. Even if you find a distro (as Thetargos pointed out all upcoming distros will) supports S-ATA many folks still need to compile a kernel in case they want to use a Soft-RAID-drive for booting (or they have to fiddle around with initrd....). Furthermore I have been using the "apt-get" functionallity of Debian and don't want to do without it anymore. Yet, It'll take its time for the new kernel to get into "stable" within Debian. So I prefer to do it the "hard way" if I have to.
But you are completly right, an "ALL WORKS PERFECT OUT OF THE BOX" would be the best (not only SATA ;-))

And even that term would be a subjective one. Because there will always be some for whom the distro worked flawlessly installin it the same day as it was released, but others will simply say this distro is a POS waste of space in my HDD, because <insert random device here> won't work with it, HELP! As for Debby and it's excellent tool, apt-get; I must say that since I installed it in Fedora Core 1, well... I simply need no other distro

Gentoo is somewhat such a distribution I had in mind.
Here's some revelations. A lot has to do with VT 8237 chipset, among others complications


http://www.mwvlug.org/modules.php?na...wtopic&p=12#12

I have this hell of a problem going for me at the moment.
Firstly, my baby:

AMD Athlon XP 2600+
Gigabye GA-7N400 Pro 2 Mobo
1024mb PC 3200
120gb ST3120026AS (I only have 1 HDD. This may be the problem. More later)
Radeon 9600XT 256mb

I have a dvd-rom and a cd rom on ide 1 and a cd-rw on ide2
it picks them up as hda hda and the cd-rw as a cd drive (cda?)

Windows XP Pro
Redhat 9.0 w/ Kernel 2.4.20-8

First. sata sucked. Did not work. 1.28mb per second. Took me 2 hours for a small format + install of linux.

Read this forum word for word and now i can get 25.23mb per second with hdparm -X69 /dev/hde.

Nice, but dies under stress or big load.

Got the latest kernel, 2.6.4 and installed.

BTW I AM A NUBE! I HAVE USED LINUX FOR A TOTAL OF 7 HOURS!

But not a nube in computers.

Derolled, compiled and installed the latest kernel, made sure everything was peachy. Restart and loaded the latest one.

Looks all good. Recognised my sata this time. (still set to pio mode in the text??)

Gets to the loading of my hdd, finds it, waits...
looks for Hdg (doesnt exist), waits. I get an error message such as:

hde = (x0:fd000) (i am really not sure)

Then waits a sec, does it again but this time it has

hde = (x0:fd000), resetting drive...

then keeps doing it (without the resetting drive part)
for eternity.

This is awful. I hate it. I dont hate linux. I just can't use it. I think the problem may have to do witht the OS trying to load up 2 raid-ed drives sharing an os but cant. (it doesnt realise it don't exist). No bios setting changes this. No kernel config setting changes it either. I even disables raid, enabled sata, did it all about 15 times. still.

PLEASE I BEG YOU! WHATS WRONG WITH MY BABY ?>!>?

Did you read about the medley patch?