Square One with Partitioning

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?

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.

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

Can you post the output of

Code:

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fdisk -l

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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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by fmw

fdisk -l produces no output at all.

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

Code:

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su -
fdisk -l

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Or type complete path of fdisk.

Code:

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/sbin/fdisk -l

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I still recommend going through the dmesg output.

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

Quote:

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Originally Posted by fmw

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

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

Code:

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cfdisk /dev/sdx

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