On Tue, 16 Nov 1999, Warren Taylor wrote:
> I want to be a Linux newbie, but I don't qualify yet because I can't even
> install it.
>
> I just bought a new computer with a Quantum Fireball 20.4 GB hard drive. The
> included special version of Partition Magic in the 6.5 version of the
> Mandrake-Linux seems to work fine; it builds a Linux partition and swap
> partition on the tail end of my hard drive. They are primary partitions and
> the main Linux partition is 3 GB in size. I intend to keep most of the drive
> dedicated to the Microsux OS until I get a better idea of whether Linux will
> meet my needs.
Your going to need a small (10 meg or so) partition at the front of the
drive for your /boot partition, just to let you know now
> When the install program starts up, it gets to the part where it has me
> choose Disk Drake or fdisk. When I choose either, it comes back with an
> error saying it can't find any valid partitions on which to install Linux.
You mean Disk druid, Diskdrake didn't ship in 6.1 integrated into the
installer.
> Someone told me it was because my hard drive was too big and that the Linux
> partition (or a boot partition for Linux) needs to be below some address. I
> don't really want to split up my Windows partition into two separate small
> paritions with a Linux partition in the middle, and in any case, I see no
> way to make Partition Magic put it somewhere other than the default place it
> chose (the end of the disk).
Use the move function to nudge the windows partition backwards on the
drive (as i said 10megs is enough) it's just going to store the kernel, a
backup of the boot sector and a couple other tiny files.
Now, the reason it says there are no drives available is because your
useing an ata66 drive on an ata66 controller which isn't going to work as
we didn't ship the kernel with the IDE patchs as they were buggy.
You can try specifying its address at the boot prompt (hdX=0xXXXX, if its
a proper ata66 implementation) this should get it working in standard IDE
mode. The address above isnot useable you'll have to do a little research
as to where it is located (hint: device manager)
> Any help would be appreciated so that I can join the proud ranks of Linux
> newbies.
>
> Warren
>
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