booted from installation CD, but cant detect same CD to install packages

[Giles]

I downloaded the two slackware 10.2 installation ISOs (their md5sums did check out) then burnt them successfully. I had no trouble booting from the first CD to begin installation, and all was going well until I had to chose the source media. I ran an auto scan for a "CD/DVD drive containing a slackware disc", and this didn't detect the CD, so then tried manually selecting cdrom hdb, and that didn't work either.

I'm finding it quite difficult to understand how the system can be running from a CD, yet be unable to find that same CD - is that as strange as it seems, or have I misunderstood?

Thanks for taking the time to read this
Toodle-oo
Giles

[Nephroth]

Boot from the CD and do not enter setup, instead try the following:

# ls /dev

If you see symlinks for cdrom or dvd then try:

# ls -l /dev/cdrom

and

# ls -l /dev/dvd

This will tell you what the devices point to. Bear in mind that your CD drive may not be /dev/hdb, that is only the case if it's the second device on the first IDE chain.

All else fails, you could just try various /dev/hd* devices until you find one that works...

To be honest with you, I've not seen this occur with Slackware/Linux before, though I do recall Windows 98 having this problem occasionally. Are you running any kind of exotic hardware the might have caused this? (Like a SCSI/FW/USB CD-ROM reader, drive on a secondary IDE board, etc.)

[lestoil]

Sorry to say I have had same problem. I set Bios to boot from cdrom. I recorded iso and checked md5sum. All ok but when inserted cd it wasnt found eventho other cds were found. I had to rerecord the cd at 8x 0r 4x until it worked properly and another time just had to run lens cleaner. Good luck.

[Nephroth]

Giles was able to boot the disc though, so it's doubtful that is his problem.

Also, I forgot to mention that in my experience, /dev/hdc is most commonly the CD-Rom drive on desktops as it's usually set as the secondary master.

[dlippiett]

when i installed slackware i selected to "select drive from a list" or what ever it was called but that was on 10.1 and it worked fine...because for some reason when you select scan...it doesnt scan the CD drive thats in use

[Giles]

Well now I'm really confused:
This morning I first found that I could no longer boot from the slackware install disk. So I took it out, and, to check it wasn't a drive error, I tried booting from a DSL CD instead. That worked fine, so I thought to myself "Ok, I've damaged that CD somehow - I'll download the iso again and burn it to a new CD". While I was doing that, I tried with the old CD again, and it now works fine. It then even detects itself with a straightforward scan...

So I've really no idea what the problem was, and cant really help dlippiett, but all seems alright for me (touch wood) - currently installing packages

Thanks for your help Nephroth, and good luck dlippiett (all I can recommend is taking the disc out, booting from another, then trying again - it worked for me )

Toodle-oo
Giles

[dlippiett]

i think its because i have 3 CD/DVD drives though...1 CD rom, 1 CD/DVD writer, and 1 SCSI DVD-RAM writer for when backing up huge drives

[Giles]

I guess if you reckon that's it (I really dont have the knowledge to say whether it is or not...) it could be worth unplugging one (probably the DVD-RAM job) while you retry installation - if it works then you have at least nailed down the problem for definate.

Toodle-oo
Giles

[dlippiett]

its not a problem in my book though, during the install i usually only have my 1 cd rom on the secondary ide master, even with booting from a diffrent one etc, it wouldnt scan the drive, so id select it from a list and voila started my install...easy as hitting the down arrow twice and hitting enter