The Matsushita Slim3 LS-120 (Model LKM-FB33-5) is not recognized by any of the processes used to create a boot disk (mkbootdisk, mount, or dd). On my Sager Notebook with a Pentium III 500 MHz. CPU, it is loaded on the secondary IDE controller as a slave. The initial DOS-based scan recognizes it as hdd, but once Linux has booted, it is no longer recognized as such. Further information can be found as messages documented for Service Request 158474, handled primarily by Will Jones at Red Hat. Because I was loading this on a machine designed to dual boot to Windows NT 4.0, I was able to boot to the installed version of Linux only by using Bootpart.exe which I had downloaded from the Web.
The following stuff is in response to your subject "LS-120 not recognized as block device". The issues with mkbootdisk and dd need to be solved keeping in mind that the ls120 is like an ide disk and not a floppy after the boot is complete. Look at the dmesg output. What does it shows for hdd? Generally you'll either see something like: hdd: LS-120 VER5 00 UHD Floppy, ATAPI FLOPPY drive or: hdd: , ATAPI UNKNOWN (type 31) drive In the first case all is ok. In the 2nd case: a) put an IDE disk on hdc and reboot, or put the ls120 as slave on hdb with hda an ide disk (this fixed the issue for me on many systems) :-) b) apply the following patch that is in 2.2.16 (this solve an ls120 detect issue on certain mainboard/bioses) or upgrade to 2.2.16 --- v2.2.15/linux/drivers/block/ide-probe.c Wed May 3 17:16:33 2000 +++ linux/drivers/block/ide-probe.c Wed Jun 7 14:26:42 2000 @@ -191,6 +191,10 @@ } else hd_status = IDE_ALTSTATUS_REG; /* use non-intrusive polling */ + /* set features register for atapi identify command */ + if((cmd == WIN_PIDENTIFY)) + OUT_BYTE(0,IDE_FEATURE_REG); /* disable dma & overlap mode */ + #if CONFIG_BLK_DEV_PDC4030 if (IS_PDC4030_DRIVE) { extern int pdc4030_cmd(ide_drive_t *, byte); Making an ls120 boot disk is something more complicated, see http://www.linuxrouter.org/ for instructions.
dmesg reveals pretty much the former alternative, but all is not "OK." Keying on one of Will Jones' last suggestions, I tried mkfs on hdd, the LS-120. The result on each initial try included something like hdd: hdd1 hdd2 hdd3 hdd4 all repeated several times. Subsequent tries at mkbootdisk forced most of the necessary files on to the disk, but also gave an "unknown partition table" error message. mkbootdisk without a previous mkfs revealed the same error message. The resultant "boot disk" failed to boot Linux. I was surprised to find that it did not even result in an error message about a non-bootable disk. The boot process just passed right over the floppy to read the hard drive.
The LS-120 is a removable hard-drive, so it has to have a partition table. This means that you can't make a filesystem directly on the disk. Currently, mkbootdisk doesn't know how to create boot disks on removable hard disks. Mount and dd not being able to access the disk is more likely a result of the aforementioned problems.
Red Hat Linux is no longer supported by Red Hat, Inc. If you are still running Red Hat Linux, you are strongly advised to upgrade to a current Fedora Core release or Red Hat Enterprise Linux or comparable. Some information on which option may be right for you is available at http://www.redhat.com/rhel/migrate/redhatlinux/. Red Hat apologizes that these issues have not been resolved yet. We do want to make sure that no important bugs slip through the cracks. Please check if this issue is still present in a current Fedora Core release. If so, please change the product and version to match, and check the box indicating that the requested information has been provided. Note that any bug still open against Red Hat Linux on will be closed as 'CANTFIX' on September 30, 2006. Thanks again for your help.
Red Hat Linux is no longer supported by Red Hat, Inc. If you are still running Red Hat Linux, you are strongly advised to upgrade to a current Fedora Core release or Red Hat Enterprise Linux or comparable. Some information on which option may be right for you is available at http://www.redhat.com/rhel/migrate/redhatlinux/. Closing as CANTFIX.