Problem - installing F-7 on an old P-III box

[satimis]

Hi folks,


F-7 i386

I'm prepared to install F-7 on a P-III box. After mounting the DVD writer on the box it was discovered that the IDE slot can only connect 40-pin flat ribbon cable. DVD writer needs 80-pin flat ribbon cable. I was forced to connect the DVD writer with a 40-pin flat ribbon cable. The F-7 DVD can boot the box but the packages can't be found asking for installing driver. I have no idea what driver it needs.

Please advise. TIA.

The P-III box is connected to 3M broadband. Is there an alternative solution.


B.R.
satimis

[mrrangerman43]

Is the DVD a older DVD? if not it should use the Atapi driver, but some of the older stuff needed specific drivers.

If your DVD needs the 80 pin flat ribbon cable put it on, the old 40 pin cables have 40 pins the 80 pin ribbon still only has 40 pins that plug into the board. They just doubled the wires not the pins, I'm not sure how the mother board knows when a 80 "pin" is needed but if you plug in a ata hd that needs the 80 pin in with a 40 pin cable it will let you know.

So you should be fine using the 80,

[satimis]

Hi mrrangerman43,

Is the DVD a older DVD? if not it should use the Atapi driver, but some of the older stuff needed specific drivers.

This DVD writer, NEC-ND-3750A-16X DVDRW, is a new model. I just removed it from an AMD Athlon 64 box for installing F-7 on this old box.

The DVD writer was set as master connected with the end of the 40-pin flat cable, otherwise it wouldn't boot the PC to start installing F-7. During installation it asked from "where to install the packages" with /cdrom/hd/etc. for selection. I selected "cdrom". Then it asked me to select driver from a list of drivers. I don't know what it asked for?

If your DVD needs the 80 pin flat ribbon cable put it on, the old 40 pin cables have 40 pins the 80 pin ribbon still only has 40 pins that plug into the board. They just doubled the wires not the pins, I'm not sure how the mother board knows when a 80 "pin" is needed but if you plug in a ata hd that needs the 80 pin in with a 40 pin cable it will let you know.

So you should be fine using the 80,

I think the problem is on the mobo of this box. I got this old P-III Intel box from a friend w/o manual of the motherboard.

I found there were 4 IDE slots on the mobo, 2 blacks and 2 whites with the blacks located near the edge of the mobo. I can't find their indication on the mobo. I connected the HD on one of the whites and the DVD Writer on one of the blacks.

I'll try each slot to see what will happen. If no solution I'll install F-7 on Internet.


Tks.


B.R.
satimis

[banzaikai]

FWIW, I just threw F7 on my P3-600 (256MB, 440BX chipset, 2-20GB HDs, SCSI, etc.), and everything went perfectly. Well, after I discovered my DVD ROM only likes DVD-Rs...

The 40 conductor cable will work in place of the 80, but you'll be limited to the lower PIO and UDMA-33 speeds (80 conductor for UDMA-66+). Most mobos will warn you, and automatically set itself to the highest available speed. You may still need to set the ide=nodma option for the install, or manually set it to UDMA-33 or PIO Mode 4 in the BIOS.

Four IDE connectors? Sounds like a RAID controller. Double-check the silk screening on the mobo to see if they're labeled (Pri/Sec). In most cases, the two ports near the floppy connector are the ones you want, and the other two off to the side are for the RAID. Also, check that cable to make sure it isn't one of those fsckin' Cable Select jobbies (one end of the cable will have "Board" on it, the other will have the end connectors labeled "Master" and "Slave"). If this is the case, then you need to jumper all drives to "CS".

During installation it asked from "where to install the packages"

Are you sure it wasn't asking where TO install the packages? Again, the only reason I can think of for this is that it sees your RAID controller, and forgets you have anything else (a Mandrake did that to me with my SCSI card, but RH had no problems...). If you're not using RAID, go ahead and disable it in the BIOS.

I got this old P-III Intel box from a friend w/o manual of the motherboard.

Is there a model/manufacturer number printed somewhere on it? Usually, it's sandwiched between slots or stuck somewhere by the northbridge. Alternately, there may be a sticker somewhere in/on the case with the numbers.

The P-III box is connected to 3M broadband. Is there an alternative solution.

Huh? Do you mean 3Com? 3M makes a lot of things (all very, very cool...), but I'm not familiar with their broadband. As for 3Com, I've had no problems with any of the 3C9xx cards I've used.

banzai "NUMB3R5" kai

[mrrangerman43]

Quoted by satimis

I found there were 4 IDE slots on the mobo, 2 blacks and 2 whites with the blacks located near the edge of the mobo. I can't find their indication on the mobo. I connected the HD on one of the whites and the DVD Writer on one of the blacks.

Whats the motherboards make/model?

As banzaikai stated, it could be that the black ones are scsi, tho I would think it would be 50 pin. But I don't think you could plug in a 40 pin into it? maybe.

My guess is the board is one of the first to have 4 ide with raid option,(I have a soyo dragon delux motherboard with 4 IDE connector on it.) either way you should look and see if you can determine PRI-0 and PRI-1. Put the HD/s on PRI-0 if you are using more than one HD, set jumpers on one as Master, and the other as Slave. If the HD is 10GB or bigger (Has udma) you should need/use the 80 pin ide conductor cable for it. Then put the DVD on PRI-1 as Master or Cable select unless you are going to have more than the one media player. In that case set one as Master and one as Slave, same as with HD's, A 40 conductor cable will work fine with them.

The P-III box is connected to 3M broadband. Is there an alternative solution.

I agree with how banzaikai put it "Huh?"

[satimis]

Hi banzaikai and mrrangerman43,

Tks for your advice

Further discovry:-

Actually it is an ATA control on board mobo. 2 IDE slots for 40-pin flat cable and 2 IDE slots for 80-pin flat cable. If connecting both the HD and DVD with 80-pin cable on booting the BIOS found them, "High Point" controller. But F-7 can't find them.

Finally I manage to install F-7 with the HD as master and DVD as slave connected on 40-pin IDE slot.

My problem is how to connect the HD work back to 80-pin IDE slot. The HD is a 40G ATA100 device.

Make following test:-
1)
Connected the HD to 80-pin IDE slot

2)
Turned on the PC. It started to boot but ending with Kernel panic;

.....
Uncompressing Linux... Ok, booting the kernel.
ACPI: Unable to load the System Description Tables
Red Hat nash version 6.0.9 starting
Reading all physical volumes.  This may take a while...
Unable to access resume device (/dev/VolGroup00/LogVo101)
mount: could not find filesystem '/dev/root'
setuproot: moving /dev failed: No such file or directory
setuproot: error mounting /proc: No such file or directory
setuproot: error mounting /sys: No such file or directory
switchroot: mount failed: No such file or directory
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kell init!

It hung here

Remark: OpenBSD 4.1 can detect the HD connected to ATA controller.

I have another old P-II box with ATA100 HD connected to a ATA66 controller, similar situation. I succeeded installing OpenBSD 4.1 on it without problem. The OS is running nicely. Unfortunately F-7 can't detect the HD.


Any suggestion. TIA


B.R.
satimis

[mrrangerman43]

PLEASE POST make and model of you motherboard it would make things easyer. if you know what it is.


IDE-1 => hda and hdb IDE-2 => hdc and hdd

IDE-3 => hde and hdf IDE-4 => hdg and hdf

If you installed linux to a harddrive on IDE-1 and then pulled the cable and connected it to lets say IDE-3 then yes you are going to get a kernel panic. You are changing the address by moving the drive. Think of it as a road and houses, if you setup a mailing address with the post office at 234 briggs st. and then moved to 432 briggs st. the mailman wouldn't know where to drop off your mail. I know it's a crude illustration, but when you installed linux the kernel knows where everything is, and by you moving the harddrive the kernel's doesn't know what to do so it goes into a panic and gives you that error.

You would have/need to edit fstab and grub.

You need to not worry about the cable, use the 80 wire connector for the harddrive. Find the Primary IDE - 0 or 1 (how ever its listed on your motherboard) and put the HD as master on that connector. And if you want you can put the DVD on the same cable as Slave, and then you will have 3 open IDE connectors to put 6 other divices if you like. So your sysem would look something like this.

PRI IDE-1 = "hda harddrive/master" and "hdb DVD/slave"

[banzaikai]

{sigh}

Okay, let's go over this again...

The ATA controller doesn't give a rat's behind what cable you use, as long as it's got 40 PINS on it. MOST controllers will throttle back to a slower speed if it detects that you're getting too many errors due to lack of an 80 CONDUCTOR cable (the extra 40 CONDUCTORs are ground leads which help to eliminate crosstalk between data/signal lines). I've used 40 CONDUCTOR cables on ATA-100/133 controllers before, and they've let me know they don't like it, but keep going (slower) anyway.

You keep saying you're jumpering correctly, but have you made sure that the cables are NOT the auto-select type (Compaq is notorious for using them)? Make doubly sure that there are no markings on the cable next to the connectors saying "Master/Slave/System" or "Drive0/Drive1/Mainboard" (et. al.). If your cable does, then all drives must be set to CS, and the appropriate drives plugged into the given connectors. After that's been checked...

on booting the BIOS found them, "High Point" controller.

As I divined earlier, High Point is a leading maker of OEM RAID controllers. Unless you're trying to do something with RAID, then I'd take a trip through the BIOS and turn off the RAID, controller, or both. Leave the Primary and Secondary IDE/ATA enabled. Most likely, the two connectors sitting off to the side/edge of the mobo are for RAID, the other two by the floppy are the ones you want.

What's happening:
The mobo goes through the post, checking out all the onboard crap. It then passes over to any "Option ROMs" present, such as those on bootable NICs (like the 3Com 3C905 type), SCSI controllers, or (AHA!) High Point IDE/ATA RAID controllers. If the drives are connected to this, then IT reports what it found, and passes things back to the mobo, where...
Fedora7 finds the RAID controller, decides it needs a driver for it, and panics when it can't find one. Sure, it found the onboard IDE/ATA, but the drives are not on that one, so "rotsa ruck, pal". This is, essentially, the same type of problem I had trying to load Mandrake 8 on my SCSI system. It saw the SCSI with the CDRW, and assumed the HD would be sitting there, too. RedHat/Fedora has always been able to use the SCSI and IDE at the same time, and is one reason why I am a big fan.

Back to your problem:
Since you need the RAID driver (for whatever operating system), most mobos allow you to have a regular IDE/ATA setup for booting the OS and drivers, using the RAID as the data (pretty much how you'd want to do things, anyway). So, as I mentioned earlier, you'll want to disable the RAID (or controller) in the BIOS, keep the standard IDE/ATA enabled, and setup as normal once you find which mobo connectors are the ones still working (as we keep reminding you, a make/model number would really, really help us out).

Just the fact that F7 is trying to use Logical Volume Management (LVM) tells me that it's thinking you've got RAID (which you do, actually). A non-RAID setup will have the LVM pop up, tell you no volumes were found, and then politely go away. At least, it does on my system.
And I second everything MrRangerman listed. Once you figure out what controls what, then wire everything the way you want it, re-install, and keep it that way. You can set the DVD with the 40 conductor cable for the time being, but if you plan on burning or playing movies, you'll want to swap it with an 80 conductor asap (PIO4 ain't the world's fastest transfer method...).

banzai "RAIDers of the Lost Archive" kai

[satimis]

Hi mrrangerman43,


I'm now replying this topic on the old P-III box.

PLEASE POST make and model of you motherboard it would make things easyer. if you know what it is.

I just got following information from my friend;

Abit BE6 motherboard
http://www.thetechzone.com/reviews/m...e6/index.shtml

The mobo looks exactly as the photo.

RAM - 256M

CPU - Pentinum III (Coppermine)

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo

processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 8
model name      : Pentium III (Coppermine)
stepping        : 1
cpu MHz         : 515.471
cache size      : 256 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 2
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse up
bogomips        : 1031.51
clflush size    : 32

Hardware Connection :
HD - Primary IDE master
CDRom - Secondary IDE master
CDWriter - Secondary IDE slave

Remark:
An additional 13G ATA100 HD connected on Controller slot-1 as master
BIOS detects it at booting. F-7 can't detect it.

# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1          13      104391   83  Linux
/dev/sda2              14        4865    38973690   8e  Linux LVM

You would have/need to edit fstab and grub.

# cat /etc/fstab

/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
LABEL=/boot             /boot                   ext3    defaults        1 2
tmpfs                   /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
devpts                  /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
sysfs                   /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
proc                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap                    swap    defaults        0 0

# cat /boot/grub/grub.conf

default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora (2.6.21-1.3194.fc7)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.21-1.3194.fc7 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
        initrd /initrd-2.6.21-1.3194.fc7.img

My problem is "F7 can't detect the HD on the Controller". I don't know how to change its designation.

You need to not worry about the cable, use the 80 wire connector for the harddrive. Find the Primary IDE - 0 or 1 (how ever its listed on your motherboard) and put the HD as master on that connector. And if you want you can put the DVD on the same cable as Slave, and then you will have 3 open IDE connectors to put 6 other divices if you like. So your sysem would look something like this.

PRI IDE-1 = "hda harddrive/master" and "hdb DVD/slave"

F7 is working quite nicely on this old box. I'm now updating it.

The reason for to reconnect the HD on the Controller is to gain better performance (faster). It is a ATA133 HD. Even though the Controller only supports ATA66 there will be better performance gained.


B.R.
satimis

[satimis]

Hi banzaikai,

Tks for your advice.

The ATA controller doesn't give a rat's behind what cable you use, as long as it's got 40 PINS on it. MOST controllers will throttle back to a slower speed if it detects that you're getting too many errors due to lack of an 80 CONDUCTOR cable (the extra 40 CONDUCTORs are ground leads which help to eliminate crosstalk between data/signal lines). I've used 40 CONDUCTOR cables on ATA-100/133 controllers before, and they've let me know they don't like it, but keep going (slower) anyway.

I connected the HD with 80 pin flat cable on the Controller

You keep saying you're jumpering correctly, but have you made sure that the cables are NOT the auto-select type

No, absolutely. I'm aware that. 2theMax also use cable-select flat cable.

Others noted with tks.


B.R.
satimis

[banzaikai]

Okiedokelie, now that we know it's an Abit BE-6, we can peruse the manual (an older mobo, so it was moved to the ftp area, away from the shinier http stuff).

And, boy-howdy, is this one weird sonuvagun.

Quick tips:
- Make sure nothing is plugged into PCI Slot 3 (counting down from the top, near AGP), as this shares an IRQ with the HighPoint controller.
- Make sure that PCI Slot 1 and AGP aren't being used by cards at the same time (they share an IRQ).
- PCI Slots 4 & 5 also share, so check those out.
- The HighPoint is considered an "EXT" device, so you really have to play with the BIOS settings to get it to boot from and assign priority to it (see section 3-12 of the manual).
- In appendix D, it seems that the HighPoint is considered SCSI (but since F7 now treats everything as sdx#, no problem there).
- If you don't need/use the serial ports or lpt, then disable them to free up IRQs.

So, I'd try disabling the on-board IDE controllers (section 3-31) - this will mean IDE3 is Primary, and IDE4 is Secondary (1 & 2 are disabled), setting the boot options to "Ext, A, C", and EXT options to "C, D" (section 3-12), and see what happens. I'm betting things will pop up as expected. If that works, then you can re-enable the onboard, making sure that the boot options show EXT first, followed by the "E, F" options for the onboards. A couple of times reading through the manual will be needed to get the light in your head turned on.

If none of this helps, then we're off to look for the HPT-366 driver for Linux, or just sticking with the ATA-33 onboard.

banzai "RTFM" kai

[satimis]

Hi banzaikai,

now that we know it's an Abit BE-6, we can peruse the manual (an older mobo, so it was moved to the ftp area, away from the shinier http stuff).

Tks for your link.

- Make sure nothing is plugged into PCI Slot 3 (counting down from the top, near AGP), as this shares an IRQ with the HighPoint controller.

PCI Slot 3 is free.

- Make sure that PCI Slot 1 and AGP aren't being used by cards at the same time (they share an IRQ).

PCI Slot 1 is also free.

- PCI Slots 4 & 5 also share, so check those out.

Slot 4 is free. Slot 5 - Ethernet card.

- The HighPoint is considered an "EXT" device, so you really have to play with the BIOS settings to get it to boot from and assign priority to it (see section 3-12 of the manual).
- In appendix D, it seems that the HighPoint is considered SCSI (but since F7 now treats everything as sdx#, no problem there).
- If you don't need/use the serial ports or lpt, then disable them to free up IRQs.

So, I'd try disabling the on-board IDE controllers (section 3-31) - this will mean IDE3 is Primary, and IDE4 is Secondary (1 & 2 are disabled), setting the boot options to "Ext, A, C", and EXT options to "C, D" (section 3-12), and see what happens. I'm betting things will pop up as expected. If that works, then you can re-enable the onboard, making sure that the boot options show EXT first, followed by the "E, F" options for the onboards. A couple of times reading through the manual will be needed to get the light in your head turned on.

Connected the HD to IDE-3 as master. Played around on BIOS without result.

Turned on the PC. It started to boot but ending with Kernel panic;

..... Uncompressing Linux... Ok, booting the kernel. ACPI: Unable to load the System 
Description Tables Red Hat nash version 6.0.9 starting Reading all physical volumes. 
This may take a while... Unable to access resume device 
(/dev/VolGroup00/LogVo101) mount: could not find filesystem '/dev/root' setuproot: 
moving /dev failed: No such file or directory setuproot: error mounting /proc: No such 
file or directory setuproot: error mounting /sys: No such file or directory switchroot: 
mount failed: No such file or directory Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kell init! 

It hung here

Tried both options of EXT - UDMA66/SCSI. F-7 can't detect the HD. Actually it is not necessary to disable IDE-1 and IDE-2. With the boot sequency - EXT,A,C, it boots the HD straight. It is only because F-7 can't detect the HD on the Controller.


Plugged a pendrive on the P-III box

# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1          13      104391   83  Linux
/dev/sda2              14        4865    38973690   8e  Linux LVM

Disk /dev/sdb: 1007 MB, 1007419392 bytes
31 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1023 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1922 * 512 = 984064 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               1         509      489118    6  FAT16
/dev/sdb2             510        1023      493954    6  FAT16

F-7 detected it.

If none of this helps, then we're off to look for the HPT-366 driver for Linux, or just sticking with the ATA-33 onboard.

Yes. Another solution is to run OpenBSD or to find a Linux distro which can detect HD connect to ATA66 controller.

Anyway tks again for your advice.


B.R.
satimis

[banzaikai]

Another solution is to run OpenBSD or to find a Linux distro which can detect HD connect to ATA66 controller.

Err, no. You're missing the point: It isn't ATA-66 that's giving you trouble, it's the HighPoint controller giving you trouble.
If you look at the manual, you'll see the Device Manager screenshots of the various Windows shown. Every one of them show the HPT-366 as a SCSI, and not ATA-66/IDE controller. Odd, isn't it? This is because the ATA-66 standard wasn't finalized when the board was made, and Abit wanted to beat everyone else to the punch. So, they went with the new HPT chip, which mounts as SCSI, but provides ATA-66.
The other distros you've used so far have somehow managed to correctly read and load the module needed. You just need to use the "linux dd" option for F7, and then give it the downloaded driver for the HPT-366.

Unable to access resume device (/dev/VolGroup00/LogVo101)

Just curious, but have you tried turning OFF the LVM mode? Maybe F7 *is* loading the HPT driver, but something in the LVM is still pointing it to somewhere else. After all, it seems to see the drive partitions...

/dev/sda1   *           1          13      104391   83  Linux
/dev/sda2              14        4865    38973690   8e  Linux LVM

... and that tells me it sees the drive, which is on the controller, which is the HPT-366. Try re-installing, paying particular attention to the drive partitioning part (where you setup LVM). Since this isn't RAID or a Beowulf cluster, you won't be needing LVM.

banzai "grendel" kai

[satimis]

Hi banzaikai,


I found following tech documents on googling;

Booting from the HPT366 interface
http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~cklin/hpt366/

The Linux Ultra-DMA Mini-Howto
http://www.linuxvalley.it/encycloped...Ultra-DMA.html


It is not so simple and straight forwards. It needs to recompile the kernel enabling HPT-366 support, copying the kernel on a floppy to boot the PC, etc.

I only use this old P-III box as workstation for documentation and web browsing. I'm reluctant injecting huge effort on solving the problem.

The other distros you've used so far have somehow managed to correctly read and load the module needed. You just need to use the "linux dd" option for F7, and then give it the downloaded driver for the HPT-366.

Could you please explain in more detail on "linux dd" option and download driver for the HPT-366. On which image I run "linux dd"???

Just curious, but have you tried turning OFF the LVM mode? Maybe F7 *is* loading the HPT driver, but something in the LVM is still pointing it to somewhere else. After all, it seems to see the drive partitions...

/dev/sda1   *           1          13      104391   83  Linux
/dev/sda2              14        4865    38973690   8e  Linux LVM

... and that tells me it sees the drive, which is on the controller, which is the HPT-366. Try re-installing, paying particular attention to the drive partitioning part (where you setup LVM). Since this isn't RAID or a Beowulf cluster, you won't be needing LVM.

Agree. Maybe F-7 already has HPT-366 driver running. I have a spare 13G ATA-100 HD. I can make a test on it, installing F-7 without LVM. I'll partition the HD as follows;

100M /boot
8G /
512M swap
balance /home

But I must connect the HD on IDE-1 first because F-7 can't find the HD during installation. After finish and making sure F-7 is running properly I'll connect the HD on IDE-3 to see what will happen.

I'll come back to the forum after finishing the test. Any further suggestion will be appreciated before start. TIA




B.R.
satimis

[banzaikai]

The two links provided talk about the 2.0 and 2.2 kernels. Fedora 7 is up to 2.6.20-1.2952, which tells me the driver should already be in there (the first link mentions inclusion in the 2.3/2.4 kernels). I'd try re-installing on your 13GB drive, wired as master on IDE3, with the DVD as master on IDE4 - just those two, nothing else (kudzu will handle anything added later, we just want the main /boot, /swap, and /home partitions to stay put).

Could you please explain in more detail on "linux dd" option and download driver for the HPT-366

Essentially, you download the module/rpm for the HPT-366, and throw it on a floppy. You then boot from the install disk, and instead of just typing "linux install", you type "linux dd", which tells anaconda that you need to load a module not provided in the iso. After some time, anaconda will ask for you to insert the disk (or point it to a flash drive, etc.), and it'll load up whatever is there. Once loaded, install goes normally. It's all laid out in the Fedora 7 documents (scroll to section A.5.1 Adding Hardware Support with Driver Disks).

But I must connect the HD on IDE-1 first because F-7 can't find the HD during installation

As MrRangerman pointed out, this may also be a bad idea, since the drive assigned /dev/sda1 may not be /dev/sda1 once you switch back. Since the whole point of getting this thing going is in using the HPT-366, then try the "dd" option first, with all drives mounted where you'll be needing them. It also saves you the trouble of installing this thing, only to have it fail, whereas you could know in a matter of minutes whether it sees the drive/controller during install, since the install will fail if it doesn't.

But that's just me...

banzai "fuzzier logic" kai