Help installing on Intel DQ965GF

[mksco]

This is just my second Debian install and I'm new to Linux. I have a brand new Intel DQ965GF motherboard and when I'm getting a "No common CDROM drive was detected" error. I'm installing the testing version (that's the version I need for other reasons) and I've tried using the net install and the DVD install with the same results. In both cases the system boots on the install CD/DVD and the first several steps work fine. The mobo came with some drivers but nothing for the cdrom or ide.

The Installation guide has a few suggestions, none of which helped me:
The system has both a CD/DVD R and a CD/DVD rw and I tied both.

There are no entries in /var/log/syslog about a CDROM, but there is a entry. about a missing module ide-mod.

There is no /dev/cdroms or anything else that looks like a cdrom

The install guide says to check if DMA is currently enabled but there is no /proc/ide folder so I think the problem is that the ide driver was not installed.

Any help would be appreciated.

[antidrugue]

There are a few threads about this on the forum, this one for example :
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/per...herboards.html

Basically you have to use a custom netinstaller available here :
http://kmuto.jp/debian/d-i/

[mksco]

I'm pretty new at this, but it seems the custom installers are all for sarge builds. It seems to me that these won't work.

[antidrugue]

I'm pretty new at this, but it seems the custom installers are all for sarge builds. It seems to me that these won't work.

What makes you say that ?

Did you read the thread I linked earlier ? It does work for everyone else with an Intel 965 based motherboard. At least it worked for me (using a similar i965 motherboard) and all the others that tried it on this forum. The important think is to have an installer using a 2.6.19 (or newer) Linux kernel. Otherwise some distribution using severely patched kernel will also work (OpenSuse 10.2, Mepis 6.5, etc.).

The latest Etch installer wouldn't work on my i965 motherboard, but this custom Sarge installer did. Just upgrade to Etch afterwards.

[mksco]

Yes, I read the previous thread and your post in it specifically. When I go to the link, http://kmuto.jp/debian/d-i/, I see several custom installers. I think I want a 2.6.19 or 2.6.20 installer, so that leads me to rule out all but the first three. All three of those have a comment, "PATA machine may fail to find a disk and CD..." which is exactly the problem I have. Thus, I conculded that these probably wouldn't work for me. Is there one you recommend trying first?

Thank you for the help.

[antidrugue]

I suggest you try the first one "sarge-custom-0304.iso". You don't loose much in giving it a try.

[gdarkblade]

This is documented in spots across this site and others but the Intel 965 boards are doing something freaky with the ide controller. It actually looks like the chipset has no IDE controller so it's technically an external one. The way to fix it is to load the kernel with the switch all-generic-ide. This is easy on Slackware but should be possible with almost any distro and a 2.6 kernel. Once install is complete there should be a way to fix the boot loader or add a module to load the right ide driver or just leave all-generic-ide in the boot parameters.