I am new to the Unix environment, but I have found a gotcha that maybe
someone needs to look into or maybe document to prevent newbie's like me
from stumbling into it blind.
Hardware: ( important later )
Asus A7V with an Athlon 900 mhz
**Promise ATA100 controller**
and a Standard VIA pci Ide controller.
( incert all the standard Perifials here. )
Now there were two issues ( one of which i have solved, and seen someone
else having problems with yesterday so I will share. The BIOS is not as it
would seem. In order for Linux to be able to see and use all the PCI devices
you must do a few tricks. If you are going to do a network install, take out
your sound card and everything except your NIC. go into your BIOS and
DISABLE EVERYTHING ( ANY PC98 HEADERS, AND ALL USB. ) set the bios to NON
PLUG AND PLAY. Then go to your pci settings and ASSIGN an IRQ for your nic.
Then you wont have any problems. You can after you get set up go back ( I
did it one feature at a time ) and setup all your missing stuff. Remember
when you set up your sound and any other PCI to ASSIGN the slot an IRQ
otherwise even tho it says its in non-plug and play mode it wont act right.
Now for the gotcha! I went and got the kernel 2.4.0.7.mdk from the website
of one of the mandrake maintainers. ( I dont remember who and the address is
in the mandrake install i cant get into ) I read all I could find, and then
did an rpm test install and looked for errors/recomendations. ( yes its a
windows dependancy, i am working on it. ) when i didn't see any problem I
installed it. still no errors. Its at this point I made an erronious
assumption. I assumed that the failsafe boot was a seperate kernel and
disabled features. so I did not try to save the kernel 2.2.17 as it did not
support my promise controller in any way. ( I had to put all my IDE on the
pci controller until after the install, then I was able to move the windows
drive back to the promise, i just couldnt get into the drive as it was not
recognised ) anyhow, after the upgrade the new kernel Loves the promise
controller. only the drives are numbered in a different manner and I havent
found a way to get booted up in two days. :)
I have been able to tag something like root=/dev/hdf6 to get the prosses
started, but I cant get far enough into the prosses to edit my mtab and
fstab to see and mount the partitions. it will let me into maintenence mode
but in read only mode. I cant make changes to anything. any Ideas will be
cherished. I am sorry for the lengthy post but I needed to be sure you seen
all the variables. is there anything i can do at this point to get back in
to this installation? and if not how will I reinstall and then upgrade the
kernel and not lock myself out again? i dont see my way around this one
guys, any way you slice it the partitions will change dramatically when
Linux see's and likes the Promise controller.
Robert Dunlap
Systems Administrator
United Truckers Services, Inc
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
windows>="expensive toy"
Linux>="A free tool"
