debian install on SATA disk

[kfizzle]

hi i got basic question:

i just bought myself a shiny new sata300 drive
and i was trying to install debian onto it

actually first thing i tried to do was clone by old debian drive from my old hard drive
by using copy commands and i copied all files and everything perfectly

then i edited the fstab to fix the hda7 to sda3 or whatever for swap and linux partitions
but then when id restart pc with the sata linux partition activated it wouldnt do anything

so i tried to do fresh install of debian
and it doesnt even give me option to install onto my sata drive, only my other ide drives show up.

so um? how do i install linux to my sata drive?
and later on when im going to take out one of my ide drives

thats not gonna mess up my linux drive mapper is it? in /dev/ ?
and if it will? how do i fix that drive mapper so all my partitions show up right on my linux?

cant wait till etch finally comes out, hopefully it will have better drivers, better support, better filesystem etc..

[jakwi]

I'm not sure I know the answer to all your questions, but I did a debian install on my sata drive. I had a few problems. first was that I couldn't get my mobo to detect the drive. It turns out my mobo (msi km4m-v) only supports SATA 1 (150 MBS.) There was a jumper that on the drive to select that. After that It detected immediately. I have a dual boot system, so I had to use the sata drivers on a floppy that came with my motherboard during the win XP install. After that Debian installed with no more than the normal issues. The only issue I haven't been able to resolve is that if I plug my ide drive in It boots from that drive instead of the sata drive. It still detects the sata drive, so I just transfered my files to the sata drive while booted on the ide drive, Then I removed the ide drive.

so, after rereading your question I would try disconnecting the ide HDD, and see if the debian install detects it, if it doesn't try enabling the 150 Mbs operation. Hope this helps,

Jason

[kfizzle]

id thought normally the mobo would just speed down my hard drive
cause truth is my mobo only supports sata150
while my drive is sata300

i got it cheap for less than 50 bucks for 80 giger so i was happy especially sata300

actually i havent had any problems using sata as dos or anything else
my linux livecd's detect my sata drive as well, knoppix 4.0.2 thats the old one
thats what i used to copy my old linux partition to my new sata linux partition

but if its that speed jumper setting compliance thing, that could be it too,
ill switch that later on today when i figure out how to mess around witth the speed setting.

anyhow? how do you auto-detect new hard drives/cdroms on linux? when you add new drives or new cdroms? cause i was thinking if this sata drive doesnt work on my linux, i might just use it as a storage drive then instead, and use another ide drive as my main drive, even though i really wanted my sata drive as my main drive.

[kfizzle]

my drive was already setup on sata150
the mobo detects it fine
but for some weird reason, even though the debian installer loads the nforce3 sata drivers, it still cant detect the drive, i dont know why....

awful,
im trying to figure out if theres a way i could just port it to my sata disk
but when i installed the sata drivers for my debian it still doesnt detect the sata drive...

[antidrugue]

Which Debian install are you trying? The default one ("linux" at boot prompt) with the 2.4 kernel, or the alternate one ("linux26" at boot prompt) with the 2.6 kernel.

You may have much better luck installing Debian with the 2.6 kernel.

Also make sure your BIOS sata support is set to "enhanced", not "legacy".

[kfizzle]

im actually using linux2.6 installer

funny thing:
i got asus k8n mobo, and it doesnt have option mode for my sata drives
all the sata run on default option whatever that is, there's no option for either enhanced sata or legacy sata
so i cant really tell which sata its really using

going to have to search for a bios update or something or look up asus suport board

but thats not the issue
my sata drive works perfectly fine, it detects on the board and everything

since i couldnt get the installer to work with my sata drive,
i went ahead and installed the sata drivers for kernel 2.4 even though im using kernel 2.6
and even then the sata drivers on my existing debian partition cant find the sata drive
i even checked the dmesg command and it says loading sata drivers but no sata drive found

i thought i was just going to use my sata drive as my optional drive or something... if i couldnt get the installer to work, or maybe install the sata support then port the existing debian partition to my sata drive

that's another thing:
for some weird reason my kernel 2.6 di deb package isnt working
i tried to install ntfs for kernel 2.6 support and also sata for kernel 2.6 support, but on both installs
it would say when installing the kernel 2.6 386 di package from inside synaptic, it would say it would give me a pipe error and wont install

so im using ntfs/sata for kernel 2.4 for support, i have no idea if that would cause a problem considering my base kernel is 2.6

i even went to the bother to manually downloading the ntfs support packages from the debian ftp server pool including the kernel 2.6 386 di package, and manually tried installing it using dpkg and even then the package gave me a pipe error and wouldnt install

and i thought my debian dvd was messed up, but it wasnt.



i keep thinking maybe i should switch to gentoo but debian has a bigger package database than gentoo, and theyre downloadble to discs, where as gentoo is all online packaging, and you always have to have an internet connection to be able to download those packages....

[antidrugue]

that's another thing:
for some weird reason my kernel 2.6 di deb package isnt working
i tried to install ntfs for kernel 2.6 support and also sata for kernel 2.6 support, but on both installs
it would say when installing the kernel 2.6 386 di package from inside synaptic, it would say it would give me a pipe error and wont install

You don't need to do that. Debian default kernel is compiled with NTFS support. Just mount the partition properly.

Like that for example :

mount -t ntfs -o nls=utf8,umask=0222,user  /dev/sda1  /mnt/windows

...if /dev/sda1 is your windows partition and /mnt/windows is your mount point.


Maybe try installing with the default 2.4 kernel. If it works, you can just install your own 2.6 kernel later.

[kfizzle]

omg this is unbelievable...

the debian linux kernel 2.4 installer detects my sata drive....

so ya i got it working now... sweet.

but the linux 2.6 installer doesnt find it at all....