RedHat 6.0 installation

Well, that error message is a bit vague. I assume that is not exactly what it said.

One of the basics for Linux is that it needs it's boot information to be in the first 1024 cylinders of either the first or second hard disk. If you want to put Linux and Windoze on the same disk you will need to make a space at the beginning of the disk for Linux to put it's book info.

- Eliminate any Linux paritions. Disk druid does not want any partitions, just blank space that it can set up as it needs it. If you have already set up the partitions Disk Druid will think the disk is already full.

- Use partition magic to scoot the Windows 98 partition back to leave a 16meg space at the beginning of the drive.

- When setting up your drives in disk druid, specify that you want a 16Mb partition with mount point /boot.

- Finish specifying your partitions per the instructions for RedHat installation.

- Don't forget to follow the instructions for your distribution for setting up LILO for dual boot. Remember, if you do not have the docs handy you can always find them at http://www.redhat.com

I think this will solve yout problem. The cool part is that Linux knows what to put in that /boot partition without any additional instructions.

Give it a try.

J Crouchet

One word of caution about using Partition Magic and Disk Druid...

If you want to continue to use Partition Magic to manage your partitions, do not use Disk Druid to delete and create partitions.  

Disk druid and linux's fdisk use a logical ordering that does not always match physical ordering on your hard drive.  If you create 3 partitions (a, b, and c) with Disk Druid or fdisk in linux, they may be physically ordered b-a-c on your hard drive.  This is fine in these tools, but Partition Magic can not handle the logical order.  It requires that partitions a, b, and c be physically ordered a-b-c on your hard-drive.  

If you run in to this situation (i.e. Disk Druid's created an out of order set of partitions), then you will no longer be able to use Partition Magic to manage any of your partitions!

The only remedy at that point is to use the original tool you used when creating the out of order partitions to delete them.  Once you do this, Partition Magic will be happy again.

<< sorry for being long-winded, but this caused me a fair bit of grief >>

Once I was burned by this and deleted my linux partitions, I used Partition Magic exclusively to set up my partitions before installing Linux.  I did not have any problems installing to these partitions.

Good luck,

Tyler

I still get the same error message. I did created some space at the beginning.

Crouchet :

I have tried your way and I even erased and reformatted the
whole hard drive, I still got the same error message.
What's wrong ?

If you "reformated" the drive, you HAD to have defined partitions first (unless I have misunderstood what you are saying). My instructions were to do the install without the partitions defined -- just free space.

Also, what ide devices do you have on your computer? Hard drives, CDs, zip disks, super disks, etc?

J Crouchet

I did tried erevrthings that was possible !
Erased the whole hard drive was my last choice.
I did tried not to define the partition, just free space, and it
wasn't working, but why it work in my olc PC ?

I have :

- Intel 82371AB/EB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller
  - I do have Primary/secondary IDE Controller

- Promise Technology Inc, Ultra66 IDE Controller

- IDE-CD R/RW 4x4x24
- LG CD-ROM CRD-8400B

Anything else you need to know ?

So you esentially have 3 ide controlers? A primary, a secondary and the Promise Ultra 66 Controler?

With many systems Linux's boot information must be contained on the first 1024 cylinders of a disk attached to the primary IDE controler. This is actually a limitation of the BIOS, so it may or may not be the case for you. However, it sure is sounding like that could be the problem.

Try disabling the primary controler and setting the Promis controler to be the primary. Alternatly, you could just plug your HD into the primary controler and see if that fixed the problem. Of course, you probably would not awant to leave it that way as you would lose the benifit of the Ultra 66 bus. But at least if that worked you would know what the problem is.

J Crouchet

I have disabled the primary IDE controller. So, right now in
the system properties window ( in control panel ), I only see

- Intel 82371AB/EB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller
- secondary IDE Controller

in hard disk controllers icon. How do I set the PCI Bus controller
as my primary controller.

After I disabled the primary IDE controller, I did try again to
install Linux, but it failed.

I have increased to 300 points for any experts who can help me
with this problem. I am willing to reerase my hard drive, I
just want the installation to be success.

what is cylinder ?
If I want to create a partition by cylinder, what should I know ?

If I remember correctly, the kernel that comes with RH6.0 doesn't support ATA/66 and may not support your Promise controller.  To find out, you can boot from your RH CD.  After the kernel is loaded and you are in the install, press F2 (I think, it might be one of the other F? keys) to get a command line (should be a single #).  Type 'dmesg | more' to look through the kernel messages.  There should be some messages that look like 'hda: blah blah blah' with info about the model, size and layout of your hard drive.  You'll see similiar messages for your CDROM drives.  If you don't see one for each drive in the system then the kernel can't see it and you can't install to it.

If that's the case, you'll have to enable the primary interface on the board and attach the drive to the primary interface.  Boot up again and see if the kernel recognizes the drive.

Once the kernel recognizes the drive, you can follow Crouchet's instructions.

ssimmons :

I have tried and pressed from F1 to F12, I just cannot see the
command line.

I'm sorry, that should've been ALT-F2.

I tried Alt-F2, I saw the command line like, bash#
then I typed dmseg | more,
then I got the error messgae that told me command cannot
be found. Any idea ?

I will increase the points from 300 to 500.
Please help me.

OK, I just tried my RH 6.0 disk.  The screen you want to look at is ALT-F4.  You should see some lines like:

<4> hdx: blah blah blah

Where x will depend on how many drives you have and to which interface they are attached.  x will be one of a,b,c, etc.

Make note of these and see which one is the hard drive you are trying to install to.

These are some messages that I think are important :

<4> PIIX4: IDE Controller on PCI bus 00 dev 39

<4>   ide1: BM-VMA at 0x1088-0x108f, BIOS settings:
                                              hdc: DMA, hdd:pio

<4>    hdc: CRD-8400B, ATAPI CDROM drive

<4>    hdd: R/RW 4x4x24, ATAPI CDROM drive

<4>    hdc: ATAPI 40x CD-ROM drive, 128KB Cache

<4> RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0

<4> EXT2-fs Warning: checktime reached, running e2fsck is                                 recommended

<4> VFS: Mounted root ( ext2 filesystem )

Any idea ? What else do you need to know ?

I hate to ask a stupid question, but I have read your problem and these comments, and I don't understand why you need a third controller.  Doesn't your motherboard have onboard primary and secondary controllers as I would think it would?  I have a Western Digital 20G ATA/66 and Linux has not had a problem with it.  What make and model is your hard drive?  Why can't you remove your third controller and run your hard drive from the master controller with the jumpers set for a single drive?  Unless your hard drive is some special drive, I don't see why this wouldn't work.
I have set up a system with windows98 and three versions of linux on one hard drive and had no trouble.
First I used partition magic to set up the partitions (all primary) as follows.
4G  Fat32 (VFAT)
3G  Linux native (ext2)
3G  Linux native (ext2)
3G  Linux native (ext2)
130MB Linux swap
20G Fat32 for data on a second drive.
I can boot to all three systems using LILO that came with Redhat 6.1.  I don't know if you can boot out to 16 G or not but you should be able to do it out to 10G.  Why don't you economize space and use your last partition as a data partition that all your systems can see?  That way your Windows partition may not need to be so large.  
If you are interested, when I read your response, I will try to help you further.

Idod tried, but my RedHat 6.0 just cannot found my other free spaces or drive

how to remove the promise controller and enable my primary
IDE controller again ?

Will I get an problem if I remove promise controller ?

ok...I did a little research.  You've got 2 choices.

1)  Install RedHat 6.1 instead of 6.0.  It uses kernel version 2.2.12 which supports your card.

2)  If you have to use RH 6.0, download the drivers and boot disk for your card from:

ftp://ftp.promise.com/controllers/ide/ultra66/u66linuxbeta.zip

Unzip it and read the README files for instructions.

Either way, you don't have to remove the Promise controller or re-enable your primary interface.

it is a beta version, I think I have that files, right ?

I mean I should have those files when I purchased the PC from Gateway, right ?

No, RH 6.0 didn't come with the support for your Promise card and unless you got something from Gateway that says "Linux Drivers for Promise Card" or some such then you don't have them and you need to go to Promise to get them.  Or you can install RH 6.1 which does support your card.

It still doesn't work. After I copied the promise's boot image into the floppy disk, and boot my PC from it.
The first boot was fine, so I saw this :

boot  initrd.img ......
boot vmlinuz ..boot failed

then it just stop. Why ?

Points increasing to 600.

I tried second, it was ok.
Then I was in the Utlra66 Setup script and I entered 1.
Then it gave me some information and stop after this line :

 ide2 at 0x10a8-0x10af, 0x109e on irq 10


what happend ?

Tanc02:
Why can't you remove your promise controller and run your hard drive from your primary controller?  Isn't this hard drive a ATA/66 Western Digital?  Why do you feel you need this promise controller?  What does your Western Digital manual say?  My hardware runs of the Primary and secondary controllers on the motherboard.  Why can't yours?  I am an electrical engineer and have been working with hardware and software for over 15 years.  I have been putting PC's together for many years.  Unless you have special hardware, you don't need a special controller.  The extra controller could even be conflicting with some of your other hardware.
My advice is:
1. Remove the promise controller.
2. Read your hard drive manual and set your hard drive jumpers to master.
3. Plug the hard drive into your primary controller. (make sure all cables are correct, Red on pin 1, hopefully yours are keyed).
4.  Set one of your CD-ROM jumpers to slave and plug it the second connector from the primary controller.
5.  Set the other CD-ROM for the standalone jumper setting (read the manual for the settings) and plug it into the secondary controller.
Note: If you don't have the manual, you can go to the manufacturer's website, under service or support and usually find instructions.
6.  When done, and you are sure you have connected everything right, turn your computer on.  When there is a message at the bottom of the screen "press <del> for bios", press the delete key and enter bios.  Check through the menus and you will find a place where you can enable and disable devices.  Enable the primary and secondary controllers.  When done, save and exit.  Your computer will boot again and it should detect your drives via the primary and secondary controllers as you installed them.
7.  Run partition magic from floppy and post the status of your partitions.
Type, and size.  Also report free space.
If you have any OS on any partitions, please report what OS on what partition.

How to remove this promise controller ? I buy this PC from Gateway and the manual doesn't say anything about how to remove it. And I don;t have any Western Digital manual .

What is a controller ?
Will I get any loose of performances after remove it ?

Maybe this is not a good idea, unless you have someone to help who knows something about computers.  You probabably can't even get the model number of your hard drive without opening the computer, taking the hard drive out and searching it for the model number.
If you don't know what it is, what did you do, or what command did you enter that caused you to determine that there is a "promise controller"?
First of all, inside your computer, is a large board with slots in it that other boards can plug into.  This large board has the main controlling circuits for your computer, with a microprocessor, either directly on the board or a a pulg in slot.  Also the memory is usually plugged into slots on this.  This board is called your motherboard.
With most systems today, you have controller circuitry built into the motherboard to control your hard drives, CD-ROM, and floppy drives.  The two main controllers used for this purpose are called, "primary" and "secondary".  There is also a third smaller controller for the floppy.
In the past, computers did not have controllers on the motherboard, and you had to buy additional controller cards, that plug into the motherboard to get your computer to interface to your hard drives and floppy drives.  Today, usually the only reason to do this is if you have a special type of hard drive that is not supported on the motherboard.  There are two main types of controller formats.  They are generally called IDE and SCSI.  You also hear about ATA and others which are generally under one of the other categories.  ATA works under IDE which you should have.
If you open your computer up and find the motherboard, you will see boards plugged into the motherboard, some of which have connectors on the back of your computer, so you can plug your monitor in and other things.  Also, if you look near the front of the computer, by where you put your floppy and CD-ROM in, you will see your floppy drive, CD-ROM dirve, and your hard drives.  Your hard drives should be about as large as your floppy drive.  You will see two types of cables going to the hard drives and CD-ROMS.  One with black, red, and white wires with white connectors.  These cablea all converge at a large box in the back of the computer, which has a 3-4 inch fan.  These wires are for power and the box is your computer's power supply.  It also supplies power for the motherboard.  The other wires on your drives are data cables.  they are flat, wide and are grey.  They usually have a red stripe on one side.  They will be going between your hard drives, floppy and CD-ROM to their controllers.  Look where whtes wires are going.  If tyey are going to your motherboard, that device is using your motherboard's controller.  If they are going to another card that is plugged into the motherboard, that is probably an additional controller card, and is probably your promise controller.
Before you start pulling wires, you should know that these wires must be installed correctly or you could damage your hardware.  If you are fortunate, the connectors for these data cables are keyed (they can only be plugged in one way).  If not the red side of the strip is always to go onto pin 1, both on the drives and their respective controllers.  These data cables have one connector for the controller, and two connectors for the device side to let you plug two devices into each controller.
Based on whether a device is by itself on one controller, or with another device, you will set jumpers on your hard drive or CD-ROM to one of three settings according to the manufacturers instructions.
Those settings usually are for standalone, master device, or slave device.
To learn more go to the following websites:
http://exciton.cs.oberlin.edu/courses/cs100/HowCompWorks.html

http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/tutorials/
Read the following ones:
Hard Drive Configuration
IDE Interface
Hard Drive Problems
Installing a Hard Drive

If after doing this you are too confused and don't want to go to the trouble to figure it out, get an expert, otherwise, continue and learn.  I will do what I can to help.