Re: IDE disk geometry + patch

Andre M. Hedrick (hedrick@astro.dyer.vanderbilt.edu)
Mon, 7 Dec 1998 10:11:29 -0600 (CST)


It is a kernel problem and Andries and I are now working togather to make
FDISK and the kernel communicate the correct information.
As before, unless Alan asks for back coding for 2.0.36 only 2.1.132 should
carry this fix once submitted.

Force pass through the append line of lilo.conf::

hdx=2100,255,63

It will take it regardless of the BIOS.

On Sun, 6 Dec 1998, Nahshon wrote:

> I got a new large IDE disk (>8GB) and was worried about how
> it would be handled by Linux/fdisk. (before this thread
> began) I have set it to LBA. Fdisk (tried on Linux 2.0.35
> and 2.1.1XX) reports C/H/S = 2100/255/63 (which matches
> my calculation). I guess these are the values returned by
> the BIOS. I did not see any problems when using LBA and
> fdisk (am I just lucky).
>
> On another instance, A friend has partitioned his large disk
> using a commercial software. We ran Linux fdisk (from RH 5.1)
> just to verify the partitions and to set partition types.
> Fdisk reported the right number of cylinders for the "virgin"
> disk but only 1023 cylinders after the disk was partitioned.
> That makes me question where the disk geometry is realy taken
> from (is it read of the disk or reported by the firmware?).
>
> Are the problems described with LBA generic, or a result of
> broken/incompatible bioses?
> I can easily repartition my disk (nothing important on it yet).
> Should I switch back from LBA? What can I gain except for
> maybe 0.1% of the disk space?
> What are the current limits for Lilo or Grub about the location
> of boot images? I keep a /boot primary partition on the first
> LBA cylinder and use lilo or grub. Linux is installed on logical
> partitions which go beyond the 8GB mark. I plan to install
> other OS.
>
> Thank you very much,
> Itai Nahshon
> --
> nahshon@actcom.co.il
>
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Cheers,
Andre Hedrick
The IDE-FNG for Linux
The APC UPS Specialist for Linux

http://www.dyer.vanderbilt.edu/server/udma/
http://www.dyer.vanderbilt.edu/server/apcupsd/apcupsd-3.5.0.bin.tar.gz

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