Installing Slackware (Unable to read dev/hda
 

I have installed slackware on a few different computers over the past few days. Now I'm looking to install it on my laptop. I have a "new" laptop with almost 30gigs of HD space and 1k of RAM. I had a duel boot Winxp Pro / Redhat installed on it before and it worked great. Now I want to have just Slackware installed.
(Cause from what I have read, having Linux installed on the same HD as an OS with NTFS is not stable) correct me if I am wrong please :P

My Question:

I've never seen this before so far... but after booting off the installation CD for slackware, I enter Fdisk /dev/hda at the # sign.
I get this message:

(The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 4864.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Unable to read /dev/hda
# _
)

When I try to run cfdisk I get this:
(FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition 0: Partition ends after end-or-disk
Press any key to exit cfdisk)

I do have my HD set up on the first IDE disk and I am installing version 7.0
Can someone point me in the right direction so I can find out why this is giving me a problem?
I have looked through the forms for a short time and did not see any questions relating to this. I also have read the "Short Guide to Partitioning a HD for Linux system"

Any help in the right direction would be great! I also do not have a floppy drive installed on my laptop.
Thanks

Mick

I can't say that I have had these errors, but I got a few thoughts/questions when I read your thread.

I have never heard that it would be unstable to have Linux on the same HD as a ntfs filesystem. You can't have them on the same partition, but on the same HD, on different partitions will be OK.

Have I understood you right when you say you are installing Slackware 7? That's an quite old version, and maybe that can handle a 30GB disk? I don't know for sure, thats just a thougt...

I have also had the most mysterious errors, caused by bad installation media. Getting a new iso-file and burn a new CD often solve those problems.

My experience with LapTop:s are that they don't always use the /dev/-files you expect. Have you tried to just write fdisk, without specifying any /dev/?

I have been told about the NTFS issue from unreliable sources. So if it is untrue then I would not be surprised. I have put an OS on the same HD as Linux before with different partitions and I have had no issues so far.

I am using Slackware 7 because a good friend of mine let me borrow the book "Slackware Linux for dummies" he had to get me started using Slackware. The book comes with 2 CD's and the Linux version is 7. I am attempting to download version 9.1 as I type this right now and try to give it a shot. The only reason I used 7 is from my experience, when going through a book like Dummies, its better to use the version they are talking about in the book so you don't get confused on some of the things that might have changed in later versions.
I have used the CD's that came with the book to install it on a few different computers and did not have a problem with the CD being damaged or anything. But after writing my last post.. I tried to install it on another computer I have and got the same error. (so far... out of 5 computers .. 3 installed correctly with no problem and 2 gave me that error message)

I have tried just typing fdisk without any /dev after it. I get a message saying I have to type /dev/hda or something different depending on how my hardware is set up. (if I'm using IDE or SCSI)

Thanks for the reply tho

After you load your install disk (just take defaults), do a: dmesg | more

look for your hard drive: hd(x) (might not be hda)

then try fdisk again

I did the dmesg | more and it listed a bunch of info. Here is what I picked out.

hda: HITACHI_DK2323EB-40, ATA DISK drive
hdc: HL-DT-STCD-RW/DVD-ROM GCC-4240N, ATAPI CDROM drive

That is my one HD and my CD Player.
So that's good it recognized it.

But..
Above that it says:

PCI_IDE: unknown IDE controller on PCI bus 00 device f9, VID=8086, DID=248a

PCI_IDE: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later

OK, I see why you use Slack 7...
I feel thou that you should try to get 9.1 instead, that will probably recognize more hardware.

Please keep us informed how things are going...

I agree 7 is probably too old to recognize some of your hardware. Hopefully that is why the partition table is being misread. I had that problem once though. I think cfdisk could not read it but fdisk could, so you might try that if the problem still exists.

Yes that did work.
I installed version 9.1 today and I still got that same message. But after the message it continued with the partitioning program.

Thanks all for the help. I was puzzled on why that was happening.

ty