On Sat, Sep 18, 1999 at 07:30:50PM -0700, Kenneth Scharf wrote:
> I've asked this before, but I'm still confused. I have a 17.2gb maxtor
> which the bios reports as 31930 cyl, 16 h, and 63 s. Fdisk (ver 2.9g
^^^^ ^^^^^
> or whatever came with slink) reports 1024 c, 255 h, 63 s (which adds up
> to 8.4gb).
So Linux does not agree with the bios HD definition
> I was able to partition the drive using the installer from
> stormix (which was probably a tcl or perl script front end to sfdisk).
> Now when I run fdisk (after having installed debian) I get the message
> that partitions overlap.
Don't you partitioned your HD on a computer, and move it to another?
(or activated LBA on one and not on the other?)
> Fdisk also reports that the final cy is about 2100 (I forget the exact
> number) which implies that some translation is happening. My concern
> is that the "/" partition starts below cy 1024 and ends above 1024.
> Lilo current works fine, but may break in the future if I add a new
> kernel and the image gets written above logical cyl 1024.
Huuu? Why such a big '/'????? (use fractionnal installation: / +
/usr + /home .....; in case of trouble, you'll only loose a few
information)
You can 'lilo-jump' from partition to partition: I had the same PB,
so I put a lilo in the MBR, with a jump to /, then another in /,
jumping to extended partition (diff. <= 1024), then another to other
linux partition...... And it worked.
> The large disk how to implies that this cy, head, sec mapping is really
> history with large disks as what is now supplied is just a logical
> block number. fdisk, cfdisk and sfdisk still seem to rely on c,h,s
> numbers however.
>
> I don't know if my bios set up is giving me the real physical layout of
> the disk or a translation.
Linux used bios *only* at boot time, then it use its own setup; so if
bios and linux settings do not agree at boot, there might be some problems.
Try:
0)- Read *attentively* /usr/doc/lilo contents, it can help
1)- Add a line in /etc/lilo.conf: linear (after root & boot declarations)
Even if its not mandatory, it can't hurt.
2)- Bios manual setup, according to what fdisk says (in my [short]
experience, fdisk is *always* right),$
3)- If (2) don't work, then add a new line in lilo:
append="hd=cyls,heads,sctrs", where CHS are the numbers that bios
says.
Anyway, if you partitioned you're HD on a computer, and installed it on
another, you could have troubled: I made the mystake from a brand new
PII-400 to an old 486-PCI-ISA: The 486 bios was unable to handle a number
of heads > 16. So I turned the both of them in LBA mode and it worked,
but I was obliged to add 'linear' in /etc/lilo.conf because without that
line, the HD refused to boot directly (but was Ok with a diskette boot).
> SO... do I need a newer version of fdisk (is there a slink version of
> what is in potato?). How do I correctly partition such a large IDE
No
> disk. I feel that I need to have a small "/boot" partition at the
> begining of the disk to hold the kernel boot image, but if lilo can use
> the extended LBA mode this might not be necessary. Does anyone
> understand what is really going on?
See above. You're right: a small '/'!
BTW: I also had a problem, while partitionning with cfdisk on a >8.4GB HD,
so I think its better to do al the job with fdisk only.
JY
