Installing with an LS-120 drive

Installing with an LS-120 drive


Author: Mike Calcagno
Email: calcagno@sfs.nphil.uni-tuebingen.de
Web Page: http://www.sfs.nphil.uni-tuebingen.de

System Architecture: Intel
RedHat Release: RHL 5.2
FAQ Category: Installing Issues
Modification Date: Dec 24, 1998

Question:

Two problems arise when installing RHL on a machine with an LS-120 drive.

-- The installation wizard hangs when trying to create the boot disk.
-- Trying to mount files in the "usual" way -- e.g., with
                mount -t ext2 /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
   results in a "wrong filesystem type or bad superblock" error

Answer:

The problem is that (at least) some LS-120 drives are ATAPI and not IDE. The 
effect of this is that Linux treats it like another hard drive -- e.g., on my
system, the LS-120 drive is /dev/hdd.

Once you recognize this, the solutions to the above two problems are quite
simple:

(1) During the installation wizard, just answer "no" when the wizard asks you
    if you want to make a boot disk. You can make one later using the method
    described elsewhere in the RHLUFAQ. Note: you'll want to replace /dev/fd0
    in that file with /dev/hdd (or whatever RHL uses to represent your LS-120
    drive).

(2) Simply replace /dev/fd0 with /dev/hdd when you call mount and umount. You
    might also want to edit your /etc/fstab, so you can type things like
    mount floppy, and things will work correctly.


References:

None specified.