slackware won't let me partition my hd

[jnev]

i'm trying to install slack on my pc, but when i do cfdisk to partition my disk, it says i don't have permission to access my drive. i do all this as root, so i can't see what the problem is. i already have the partition set up, i just need to set it as the target partition. please help

thanks

[budman7]

When do you get this error?
When you are asked if you want to run cfdisk on this hard drive, or some other time?

[jnev]

at the very beginning, it scans all of your hardware then asks you to partition your disk

[budman7]

"At the very beginning" doesn't answer the question, but you mean right where I said?

You saw the prompt like this

( )Do you want to run cfdisk on /dev/hda

And you hit the SPACE bar, to put an X in the parentheses
This is when you recieve the error.

[jnev]

right after the part it asks you what keyboard you're using (just press enter for american), it asks you to log in as root. you just type root and press enter right? i do that and then it says type fdisk or cfdisk tp partition your drives. i type cfdisk and it says FATAL ERROR: Cannot open disk drive.

i think that's what you were talking about. it also gives me the option of typing setup to go to the actuall installation procedure, but i can't install becasue it says no target partitions were found.

[jnev]

btw, the disk i want to install to is sdb3. i tried doing cfdisk /dev/sdb3 and it gave me the same erorr.

[budman7]

That was going to be my next question, is this the only disk.

The command would be

cfdisk /dev/sdb

After cfdisk comes up, then you will select the 3rd partition.
It might be because it isn't ide.
I have no experience with partitioning drives that aren't ide.

[jnev]

nah, i have 2 sata drives.

i get the same error message if i do cfdisk /dev/sdb instead of /dev/sdb3...

anybody else know? i've heard so many good things about slackware, i'd really like to try it..

[jnev]

i tried doing the same thing with slackware 10.0 (i was uring 10.1) and it gave me the same error...

[jnev]

i think i figured out the problem. slaxkware's default kernel is 2.4, which doesn't support sata hd's. what boot parameter should i use to get it to boot the 2.6 kernel? debian gave me the same problem, and teh boot parameter i had to give was linux26, but it doesn't work with slackware.

thanks