I am trying to install Knoppmyth but keep running into an issue where the installer won't recognize the hard drive. cfdisk recognizes each partition properly and the hard drive shows up as /dev/sda. My BIOS doesn't have a PATA compatibility mode. I do not want to purchase a PATA drive nor do I want to load temporarily onto another drive then copy everything over.

I was able to successfully load Knoppmyth and get MythTV running using the SATA drive on another CPU/motherboard (Dell Dimension 8400) in compatibility mode. Switching this drive to the permanent motherboard even lets MythTV start up, but some important things are broken (networking, PVR-350) due to the chipset differences and the like.

I have tried many different techniques to get it to load such as ide=reverse, switching to a different SATA port, changing BIOS settings, etc.

Any ideas?

Knoppmyth R5A12
AMD Duron 1.8 GHz
ABIT VA-20 motherboard
Hauppauge PVR-350
512 MB RAM
Seagate 160 GB SATA
Phoenix AwardBIOS v6.00PG

Manual install should let you create the image on an arbitrary disk unless I'm even more under caffeinated that I think and am misunderstanding the question...

I believe the way it works is that without compatibility mode in BIOS then the linux kernel will need support for your particular sata chipset. I'm not sure how far along this has come, so you may want to investigate. This is one of the places where linux likes older hardware better than new...

I have definitely tried the manual install (many times). It takes me back to the partition/quit screen and locks me into that menu loop. After partitioning, some message pops up on the bottom screen line that disappears too quickly to figure out what it say then the partition/quit is back.

Since I am using R5A12, it appears that the kernel version is 2.6.9. This is pretty recent, but I have no clue how to find if the chipset is supported or not. It seems like it because even R5A9 runs off the SATA on the ABIT once I can get it onto the hard drive (loaded using the Intel motherboard though).

I figured out the problem. The sda3 partition was partitioned but not formatted. I spotted this when I started to install Mandrake 10.1. The very informative GUI showed this quite prominently. I was about to give up on Knoppmyth and do it the long route.

That's one thing i've noticed about Unix: things can be going down the tubes really fast but it often doesn't tell you unless you ask.

I almost gave up on knoppmyth because my card was not supported by 2.4 kernels, and upgrading the kernel brought a whole raft of other problems. The reason I persisted was because of these forums. I had resorted to FC3 briefly, and looking at the differences between it and Knoppmyth actually helped me solve some of my problems.

The concept of knoppmyth is great, and if you and others like have time to contribute by documenting your fixes here or on the wiki, it will only keep getting better. I think with R5 it is backpedal >> rapidly heading towards the developers goals of being << end backpedal firmly cementing is place as the best PVR distribution bar none.

You mean it isn't already there?!

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

Foot removed from mouth.