Re: Filesystem fails?

Hugo Van den Berg (hbe@cypres.nl)
Wed, 6 Mar 1996 19:52:57 -0800 (PST)


Your problem may be that your PCI machine has a more advanced BIOS than
your non-PCI machine. If the 486-BIOS is an older version it can only
address a maximum of 1024 heads/16 cylinders/63 sectors (on IDE drives).
Newer bioses can remap a drive to a different C/H/S setting because that
is more efficient, and for example use Logical Block Addressing (LBA)
mode. When you put the drive in the old machine your boot procedure
(LILO, Loadlin or whatever) may be able to read the kernel from the drive
and read some stuff off it (like RC scripts) but get confused later on
because the disk layout is not what it expects.

Check both Bioses to see if the settings match for the drive, and if not
set the PCI machine for a less advanced mode that matches the 486 machine.

On Tue, 5 Mar 1996, Kjell Andersson wrote:

> I have a problem with the slackware release 1.2.13.
> I installed a harddisk with linux on a PCI-PC and it works fine. When I
> move the harddisk to the computer in which it is supposed to be in it
> locks when it tries to add the swapping. If I remove the swapping, it
> locks on update. If I remove update it locks on filesystem check. The
> computer is a 486-PC. The PCI-PC is used for installing the harddisk
> because the 486-PC does not have a floppy. The question is why it locks
> on the 486-PC while it works on the PCI-PC.
> The kernel has been recompiled to not include too much "bullshit" that
> is not essential to the 486.
>
> / Kjell
>

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Hugo Van den Berg - hbe@cypres.nl
Phone - +31 (0)30 - 60 25 400
Fax - +31 (0)30 - 60 50 799
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