[GLLUG] Mandrake 9 on fujitsu laptop

[C. Ulrich]

Jeff Lawton wrote:
> I attempted to install mandrake on my laptop, it's a Fujitsu lifebook
> c-4230. when I boot from the CD or a floppy image when it get to the check
> partitions it list hda then hangs.(the drive lights stays on but the drive
> it self spins down) I wondered it this was just a mandrake issue so I tried
> suse 8, and RH7.3 with the same results. I also tried freebsd 4.6.2 and that
> installed with no problems. Any suggestions?
> 
> BTW I configured the drive with gdisk and ghosted doze 98 in the first 5.7g
> partition.
> 
> Jeff Lawton

It sounds like the kernel's probe isn't getting along with your IDE chipset.
Your question got me curious so I did some looking around, but I haven't even
been able to find any technical specs on the c-4230 let alone references to
any Linux problems.

Without having anymore information, you will probably have to end up booting
the kernel with an argument that tells the kernel how to access the IDE
channels (which automatically disables probing). The kernel docs (ide.txt) say
that the "standard" ports and IRQs are:

        ide0=0x1f0,0x3f6,14
        ide1=0x170,0x376,15

But take that with a grain of salt since laptops in particular are known to be
weird without reason. Perhaps you can use FreeBSD to get the values if the
standard ones don't work. If that doesn't help any, you might try passing
"hdx=cyl,head,sect" where hdx is the drive (hda in your case) and the latter 3
values are the geometery of the drive. See ide.txt in the kernel documentation
for more details.

Good luck!

--C. Ulrich