Square One with Partitioning

[fmw]

I'm trying to install Slackware. If I enter cfdisk at the root prompt it says it cannot open the disk drive. If I enter something like fdisk /dev/hda nothing happens. The drive and computer are OK because I can install anything else I want on it. What have I missed?

[Touchtecservers]

If your machine uses SATA then your hard disk may very likely be /dev/sda.

Type `dmesg | less` at the command prompt, and look through it for hard disk information.

[fmw]

It does the same thing using sda as the drive device. My equipment is probably too current for the distro.

[jayd512]

Can you post the output of

fdisk -l

[fmw]

fdisk -l produces no output at all. It just repeats the root prompt on the next line. There is no question that this distro doesn't recognize a hard drive. This same hard drive has had Scientific Linux and Open SuSe on it. I think my hardware is probably too new.

[devils casper]

fdisk -l produces no output at all.

How did you gain root privileges?
Execute su - ( its minus sign ) instead of su command.

su -
fdisk -l

Or type complete path of fdisk.

/sbin/fdisk -l

[Touchtecservers]

I still recommend going through the dmesg output.

Especially if you are using some hardware controller like RAID or such.

[jayd512]

If I enter cfdisk at the root prompt it says it cannot open the disk drive.

Maybe a silly question on my part, but you are providing the device name, right?

cfdisk /dev/sdx