hda mounting issues...

Darkmystic · n00b Joined: 28 Jan 2006 Posts: 3

I am a noob to Gentoo, and somewhat to linux-I know enough to be dangerous as the saying goes. During the initial install steps, I am trying to use fdisk to partition my harddrive. I have an entire 80gig IDE drive for gentoo. When typing in #fdisk /dev/hda I get: unable to open /dev/hda. I tried to see what is mounted at this time, and I have only my cdrom drive and the temp file for gentoo mounted (from memory I'm assuming). Again, this is a normal 7200 rpm IDE drive, and should be easy enough to configure. My system specs:
Socket 754 MSI MB using the ATI xpress 200 chipset
ATI X1300 video w/ 256 gddr3
80 7200 rpm IDE drive
512 mem (soon to be 1gig)

Again, I'm a noob, so you will have to probably promt me on some of the commands needed to work through this. Thank you to all who respond!

dahranis · Apprentice Joined: 20 Jan 2006 Posts: 166

*edited because of idito not reading it properly*

bdm · Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2006 11:59 pm Post subject:

This probably isnt the case, but I had the same problem. And the reason was because I wanted to install Linux on my third drive

Darkmystic · n00b Joined: 28 Jan 2006 Posts: 3

No, it is the only drive on the system currently, and should be listed as the master drive. I can locate it in the bios without a problem. Is there a way to mount the drive manually before beginning fdisk?

Darkmystic · n00b Joined: 28 Jan 2006 Posts: 3

I guess the followup question then is whether or not I will have to manually mount the disk prior to each bootup as well. I guess I'm not entirely certain as to why it is not being found automatically, unless the harddrive controller in the chipset is having ussues with the kernel...