[clue-tech] trouble installing Suse

[Jeffrey Brown]

>>> mrphysh at juno.com 01/04/05 6:08 PM >>>
> I am stuck.
>
> Computer is 
> 
> Dell
> 
> Hard drive                     Western Digital  Model WD64AA-75AA
> CD-ROM                      Toshiba Model XM-6102B
> Bios Version A04
>  
> I am trying to load Suse from CDs.  I have worked in linuxrc and
always
> get an "installation fail" error.

I have experienced similar issues as you encounter. When the
installation bombs switch to a virtual terminal (like Ctrl+Alt+F3 or F2
or F4) and look for something like DriveSeek Error {drive not ready}.

What I did and worked for me was start the installation but, before
doing anything switch to the virtual terminal with a shell # and type
the following command # hdparm /dev/hda or /dev/hdc (depending on what
your CD-ROM device is)  output follows on a machine:

 machina:~ # hdparm /dev/hda
 
/dev/hda:
 HDIO_GET_MULTCOUNT failed: Invalid argument
 IO_support   =  0 (default 16-bit)
 unmaskirq    =  0 (off)
 using_dma    =  0 (off)
 keepsettings =  0 (off)
 readonly     =  0 (off)
 readahead    = 256 (on)
 HDIO_GETGEO failed: Invalid argument

What worked for me is setting DMA on for the CD-ROM device like so:

 # hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda

The installation went OK after that. I don't know why SuSE's install
does this, Fedora or BSD never complained. This happened on two
different machines with different hardware.

Report back to this list and tell us your results.

> I am pretty sure that I do not have the correct drivers for the above
> hard drive and cd-rom.  
> 
> -------Where are the drivers to be found?

Not a driver issue
 
> -------How do I install them?
>  
> -------Where does the kernel live and how is the kernel modified?
>  
> thanks
> john
>
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