Not detecting Slack.

Linux Frank · Post by **Linux Frank** » Wed Jan 15, 2003 11:44 am

I download the slackware 8.1 CD. When I load it into my current system it detects the CD, and if I put it into any CD drive on my computers I can read the CD, but my PII233 cannot detect it (It detected MD and RH). Is it possible this is just a bad download, considering I can boot from it in from another computer?

Calum · Post by **Calum** » Wed Jan 15, 2003 11:51 am

is this the same machine that things mandrake 8 is a virus? maybe you should poke around in the bios and see if anything looks amiss.

Linux Frank · Post by **Linux Frank** » Wed Jan 15, 2003 12:18 pm

I'm wondering that myself. I just seems strange that it will boot MD and RH from CD and Peanut Linux even, but not slack (and yet if I look at the CD on the same computer using MD or RH it has no probs. seeing it).

Void Main · Post by **Void Main** » Wed Jan 15, 2003 1:31 pm

Will your other machines boot the Slack CD or just this one? If none will, is the Slack CD actually a bootable CD? If it is supposed to be have you tried burning a new CD? If it is not supposed to be have you tried creating boot floppies to bootstrap the installation process? I haven't installed Slackware since around version 2 or 3 so I am not up on the current installation process. I don't even recall for sure if they even had a CD isntallation back then. It was all floppy disk based (disks A1 though A4, X1 through X7, etc).

Linux Frank · Post by **Linux Frank** » Wed Jan 15, 2003 2:01 pm

My normal machine can boot from this CD. This other machine can boot from CD for MD and RH, but it does not work with Slack.

However the floppy disk option is ... well not an option, the principle reason being, there is not a floppy drive. I could put the one from my current system in it, but as it is possible the power supply is crowbarring sometimes with the extra cd drive added, I am loath to do this at the moment.

I can except that maybe this CD drive is not reading this CD as a burn anomaly, but I thought I had left such things behind when I migrated to the Linux OS, so I am just trying to get opinion on whether this could be the issue.

Other ideas are also welcome.

Void Main · Post by **Void Main** » Wed Jan 15, 2003 2:11 pm

Well it's possible that the disk is bad, however not bad enough for really good drives to be able to read. You could try taking the CD-ROM drive out of one of the machines that works and stick it in the machine that doesn't work just for the install to see if it really is the drive or the machine or possibly the disk.

Linux Frank · Post by **Linux Frank** » Thu Jan 16, 2003 9:30 am

Okay I think it may be a bad burn. The CD would not read for boot up in any drive I tried on any machine, I even brought out my 32x IBM cdrom that I have never used, and that did not help. Maybe I'll try another burn, and maybe I'll try gentoo or something instead.

X11 · Post by **X11** » Tue Jan 21, 2003 9:07 pm

Make your you try slack one say, its a great os. Its probably the best distribution out there, if it had some more user friendlyness it would be better. What i love about slack is its well documented and fun mess around with.

It makes a great server.

Linux Frank · Post by **Linux Frank** » Mon Jan 27, 2003 11:38 am

Well just to update. I burned Slack again. Again no recognition in the same PII233. Now I tried swapping CDROMs, and it gives me incompatable type when I try to install my wonderful never lets me down TEAC CDW45, which burns great, but slow. So I created a basic kernel bare.i on a floppy, pulled the floppy disk from my main sys. and started up, put in the original atapi (NEC CD-RW), and also tried this with my IBM 32x. At boot I pass the following

Code: Select all


boot: Ramdisk root=/dev/hda

That then detects my cdrom and I get up to a line that says detecting boot media (ISO9660) (or something very similar sorry it was two days ago, I can repeat and get exact message later), and then crashes at a kernel panic.

So I'm a little confused. It sounds like I have possible BIOS issues with the autodetection. and I am wondering whether I need one of the special boot kernels, and which one? I read the slack kernels list and I am still confused, as I am not sure which one will help, or even if it will.

Of note here is that, MDK, RH, Peanut, and FreeBSD 5.0 have all booted from CD without a problem. I currently have a RH minimal inst. on it. So it sounds very much like a driver issue on the ide bus?

Anyone who can offer advice it would be much appreciated.