I have a SATA drive, so I am forced into using the Manual Install option for KnoppMyth R5C7. I open up CFDISK, and the screen is blank with a line at the bottom that says "opened disk read-only - no permission to write" or something along those lines. I haven't come across that error in any google search yet and am stumped.

thanks

I've never done a manual install, but is it possible you're running trying to run cfdisk while not root?

you are technically not in Linux nor a user that has been assigned any privileges, so its not a matter of being root or not. it should allow me access to the drive, it has everyone else that uses the cfdisk program that is run when you want to manually partition a drive during the manual install process.

My best guess with the info provided is that if you are running cfdisk with out any other switches, it will default do /dev/hda

For your sata drive you will most likely have to use cfdisk /dev/sda

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how do you force switches? if you follow the manual install process, you select Partition, and it switches to cfdisk, I don't type in cfdisk and get to run any switches.
its kind of like how RedHat would run DiskDruid, except that was a GUI, this just doesn't have a GUI. in the Knopp install, I select partition and it loads it up for me, and immediately spits out that line I posted about, I don't get to type anything at any stage.

I'm not familiar with that portion of the setup since I always auto upgrade. But you can always ALT-F2 to another console and run that command manually.

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How to setup F@H
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When you select "Partition the drive" you will get another screen which lists your harddrives. Assuming you only have one, there will only be one listed. This means you cannot go up and down in the list because you can only do one selection. The reason you got that black screen with that test is because even though there's only 1 option you can select before you go into cfdisk, you did not make it. Go back to "Partition the drive" and press space bar and then enter. This should bring you into cfdisk with no problems.

Edit: I know this is an old post, however noone replied with a correct answer so I figured I'd post a reply anyways for future reference.

I am currently having the same exact problem. I never saw an option for hitting the space bar.. I will look again...

Just for reference I am sort of new to Linux. I have been using SuSE 10.1 for about 6 months now and have learned quite a bit. If anyone has any clues on this please respond I have been through the Google quest to find an answer to no prevail. I am not the only one.

Hi,

Pressing space bar is not spelled out, rather it is intuitive. It should show a drive (or more if available) You press the space bar to put an X in the ( ) next to the /dev/_da of choice. No X, no partitioning.

Mike

Thanks, the space bar did the trick however after installing it will not boot. I am at work now so I cannot post details. Thanks again.

Hi,

Oh, I forgot to mention that getting SATA all setup as a bootable is a real pain There are a couple of good posts from over the past couple - three weeks that should be able to help you get set up. Experiences vary depending on the system. Once past the boot, it should run fine.

this may be one point to start ..
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... 6e49c61b2f

Mike

Gah. lol. the space bar. Figures.

I was getting the same exact problem with /dev/hda with a read only error because I hadn't partitioned the drive yet.

It went into a constant loop and wouldn't let me quit. I had to reset the computer.

I ran fdisk /dev/hda on it manually and created a partition. After that it finished the install.

Another bug I had was I had the cdrom on the ide1 controller, and the hard drive on the ide2 controller. Although the software recognized that it was on hdc, it wouldn't install. Of course, I didn't think to hit the space bar when I tried to do it manually.

Thanks for the advice. However, it's not intuitive, and the error message that results from not pressing the space bar is wrong.

Intuitive is mostly a matter of what you're used to. I don't find anything praticularly obvious in using the space bar to select things, but it's one of the short list of things to try.

As for the error message, it's actually correct as far as it goes, the problem is that it's an error at a much lower level than you're thinking, which means it's not very helpful.

Hi,
Sorry, been setting up to many Smoothwall machines lately, but the spacebar is a lot like the "any key", you got to press something to leave a mark.
Mike