Hi Igor, Sure, once I boot with a floppy the entire system comes up fine on the HD, the file system is mounted and all the various partitions are there big as life. I have been able to move a lot of data from an older machine to the new one by burning a CDRW and then copying from the CD drive to the HD on the new machine. Everything works reasonably once I boot up, I just cannot get the HD to boot without the help of a floppy. On Sat, 18 Jan 2003, Igor Gueths wrote: > Assuming you have any data on the hd, can you mount any filesystems once > successfully booted from floppies? Bc if not, you may want to check to > make sure that the connection from the hd to the power supply is firmly in > place, and that there are no loose wires. Does the drive in fact spin up > when you power the machine up? > > May you code in the power of the source, > may the kernel, libraries, and utilities be with you, > throughout all distributions until the end of the epoch. > > On Sat, 18 Jan 2003, Chuck Hallenbeck wrote: > > > Hi gang, > > > > What else should I look for? I have a brand new machine with a 40 > > GB Fujitsu HD and I am installing a Slackware 8.1 distro with > > speakup and an external doubletalk. The installation was made > > from a set of diskettes and went without a hitch. The root > > partition was large because I need a lot of space for /tmp and > > perhaps /var in addition to the usual miscellaneous stuff. It is > > about 4 GB and is the first partition. I marked it active with > > fdisk just in case, but installed lilo to the MBR anyway. The > > software and the general configuration is similar to my own > > system. I made a couple of boot disks during the installation > > process, and it is fortunate that I did, because the system will > > not boot from the HD. It boots fine from the floppies I made, but > > not from the HD. > > > > I checked the bios setup program (a royal pain in the ass) and > > saw that the HD was detected as the primary master, and that it > > was selected as the second priority boot device, right behind the > > floppy. I checked and double checked the installation (in fact I > > did it more than once) being certain to install the kernel from > > the installation boot floppy, but nothing. No error messages, no > > nothing. It acts as though the HD were simply not present,. and > > yet the bios recognizes it, it is on the list of devices to boot > > from, and it works fine when booting from a floppy. > > > > Well maybe not entirely fine. One more symptom. When I boot up > > from a floppy and pay attention to how it is working, the HD is > > extremely sluggish. Checking the data transfer rate with hdparm > > -t, I get about 10% the rate I get on my own system. Also, the > > hdparm command is unable to set the DMA option with the -d1 > > option. What happens is that the hdparm command causes a 60 > > second delay after which the system resumes functioning but > > without the DMA setting changed. > > > > I am dealing with some idiots at a computer store who are > > convinced the problem is with Linux, and I am equally stubborn in > > insisting that it is not. > > > > Any notion of what I might be overlooking? This is incredibly > > frustrating. I gave the folks at the store permission to wipe out > > my root partition if they needed to, hoping they would put a DOS > > or Windows OS on it to check it out, but they happen to have a > > Redhat 6.0 disk lying around and are spinning their wheels trying > > to replace Slackware 8.1 with Redhat 6.0 because they suspect > > there is a hangup when Linux tries to use a raid personality. > > > > Thanks for any ideas. > > > > Chuck > > > > > > -- > > The Moon is Full > > So visit me sometime at http://www.mhonline.net/~chuckh > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Speakup mailing list > > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup > -- The Moon is Full So visit me sometime at http://www.mhonline.net/~chuckh