Disk Access from the Command Line in the Debian3.1 Installer

I have recently downloaded and Debian 3.1 and started working through the installation process and have encountered something that is different about the Debian Installer disk than most of the Linux variations that I am familiar with (Redhat Slackware Gentoo Fedora) that is hanging me up somewhat. Basically, the normal hd devices in /dev don't seem to exist. So for example if I boot into the installer in 'expert' mode and then drop into a shell and try to 'fdisk /dev/hda' it is not possible because the device doesn't seem to exist:

Code: 
~ # fdisk /dev/hda
Unable to open /dev/hda
I suspect this has something to do with the 'udev' package not being available on the installer but I very rarely deal with linux on this level so I'm not sure. There *is* a device that looks like:

Code: 
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/disk
located in the /dev directory and it appears that the Debian installer manipulates the disk in this manner but I can't seem to run fdisk on this device either. So I am wondering if someone could offer up some clues for accessing the disk directly?

 

 

 

 

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