# gentoo & SATA hard disk

## godfather_10200

i want to install gentoo on my pc (64 bit version of gentoo) but in boot process my SATA hard disk is not discovered by gentoo and i can`t use fdisk to prepare my hard disk for installing .

what should i do for this?

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## amzuk

did u try /dev/sda (sda1 sda2 sda3 etc..) ?

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## godfather_10200

i tried sda but it didn`t work

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## godfather_10200

i think the gentoo live cd didn`t found my hard disk

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## Jinidog

I supervised once the gentoo-installation on a machine with SATA.

For an not obvious reason it declared the first harddisk as sdb, although the disk-installation uses it as sda, too.

So try sdb.

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## amzuk

# ls /dev

and look what u have there

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## godfather_10200

i listed /dev directory but i didn`t have sda or sdb

my version of gentoo is 2004.0 for amd 64 bit cpu are you sure that this version support sata hard disks my hard drive is western digital 120 GB

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## amzuk

i have "livecd-2005.0 minimal"

i just checked it n when i boot from it n do 

# ls /dev  i can see sda sda1  for my sata drive (dont remember exactly which one: lazy too look inside. i think its segate 80GB. but might be WD like yours, cant remember now)

n i have P4 on intel i865 chipset (asus P4P800se motherboard) 

good luck

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## syrrus

boot:gentoo -noapic

that should fix it.

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## Kamp

try also /dev/sde

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## godfather_10200

i found that i have the /dev/hdb but it has no partion on it but i have 14 windows ntfs partion mabye it don`t found my dirves becuase of their format

please help me

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## nic01

Could you post some additional information:

What SATA controller do you use. Intel something?

```
#lspci
```

what does 

```
#dmesg |grep sd
```

 and 

```
#dmesg |grep hd
```

 gives you?

And what about 

```
#fdisk -l /dev/hdb
```

and 

```
#uname -r
```

Cheers,

Nic

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## fezz

I am having the exact same problem installing gentoo. 

/dev/sda does not exist. I tried gentoo -noapic when booting with no results.

To answer your questions:

#dmesg |grep sd

> returns nothing

#dmesg |grep hd 

> hda: SR244W, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive

> hda: attached ide-cdrom driver.

> hda: ATAPI 24X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache

#fdisk -l /dev/hdb 

> returns nothing

#uname -r 

> 2.4.25-gentoo

Thanks for your help.

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## nic01

Looks like you're playing with a 2.4 kernel. Don't know how well they support SATA controllers. You're probably better of with a 2.6 kernel. Don't remember if the 2005 LiveCD offers you to choose between the 2.4 and 2.6 kernel. Otherwise there are plenty of alternative AMD64 Livecd's with kernel 2.6 out there. 

fezz -> are you running a AMD64 system as well?

What SATA controller are you using? SIL3112, SIL3512 or what? You might want to check with #lspci

Cheers,

Nic

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## amzuk

# lspci | grep -i sata

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## fezz

I am trying to install this on a dell server with dual intel xeons. This is for work and I was given a 2004.1 live cd. I'll find out if I can get IT to burn me a 2005 live cd. In the mean time any other help is appreciated.

#lspci | grep -i sata returns the following:

00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corp. Enterprise Southbridge SATA cc=IDE (rev 02)

thanks.

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## WhiteHat237

I'm using 2006.1 amd64 install cd.

As suggested above, at the boot: prompt I passed the noapic option as well as acpi=off which resolved this problem for me.

```

gentoo noapic acpi=off

```

I now have both /dev/sda and /dev/sdb (There are two physical sata 2 hard disks in the box)

Here are my system specs for reference:

livecd ~ # lspci

00:00.0 Memory controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 Memory Controller (rev a3)

00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 ISA Bridge (rev f3)

00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation CK804 SMBus (rev a2)

00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 USB Controller (rev a2)

00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 USB Controller (rev a3)

00:04.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 AC'97 Audio Controller (rev a2)

00:06.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation CK804 IDE (rev f2)

00:07.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation CK804 Serial ATA Controller (rev f3)

00:08.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation CK804 Serial ATA Controller (rev f3)

00:09.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCI Bridge (rev f2)

00:0a.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 Ethernet Controller (rev f3)

00:0b.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev f3)

00:0c.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev f3)

00:0d.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev f3)

00:0e.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3)

00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration

00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map

00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller

00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control

05:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G70 [GeForce 7600 GS] (rev a1)

livecd ~ # uname -a

Linux livecd 2.6.17-gentoo-r7 #1 SMP Tue Aug 29 01:41:38 UTC 2006 x86_64 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+ GNU/Linux

The drives are seagate 250 GB sata 2 disks

sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sda

  Vendor: ATA       Model: ST3250820AS       Rev: 3.AALast edited by WhiteHat237 on Sun Sep 24, 2006 8:45 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## WhiteHat237

Although /dev now contained sda and sdb, the system still wouldn't boot.  It would get to the point in the boot process where it tries to mount the file systems, and it would stop and complain that the root file system had not been specified.  It then asks for the root password to start a shell, or you can type in the location of the root file system "/"

After telling it /dev/sda3, it finished booting with no problems.  Obviously this is not ideal.  What if you want to reboot the box remotly?  No one will be at the terminal to type in /dev/sda3 and press enter.

After googling for a bit I found an IM conversation where I learned that you have to initially boot to a ramdisk and pass a few extra options on the kernel line in grub.conf to tell the system that the root file system is on the ramdisk.

After some testing and tweaking of grub.conf, I resolved the issue.

Here's my grub.conf which shows how to resolve this.  (I should note that I'm a genkernel user at the moment, and thus I'm using initrd.)

```

title Gentoo Linux 2.6.17-r8-v1

root (hd0,0)

kernel /boot/kernel-genkernel-x86_64-2.6.17-gentoo-r8 noapic acpi=off root=/dev/ram0 init=linuxrc ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/sda3 doscsi

initrd /boot/initramfs-genkernel-x86_64-2.6.17-gentoo-r8

```

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