2.6 kernel

[Gene C.]

On Tuesday 16 December 2003 12:43, Jeremy Katz wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-12-16 at 12:21, Alan Cox wrote:
> > On Tue, Dec 16, 2003 at 11:15:29AM -0500, Gene C. wrote:
> > > As I mentioned in a previous message, I was having problems installing
> > > the development tree because the LBA disk parameters were not
> > > recognized properly.  Although I am willing to put up with a lots of
> > > stuff testing systems, I have no desire to just screw up my harddisks
> > > (even on a test system).
> >
> > Make sure you report this Bartlomiej. The 2.6 tree does a lot less with
> > geometry than 2.4. Andries took out a lot of the handling because the
> > kernel itself doesnt really care and the methods for playing guess the
> > bios mapping are heuristics at best and belong in tools like anaconda.
> >
> > I don't know if Anaconda has been taught to do disk geometry work in the
> > disk sizer yet or not
>
> parted has had no work done in this area that I know of.   *sigh* :/
>
> Of course, with the little that it matters, it may well be irrelevant
> and I should just suppress the warning message.

To me it seemed to matter since it was not using the LBA values but the 
"actual" (real) values of the device.

One system I tested on has two ide drives. hda is a 6.4GB Western Digital with 
FC1 installed into a single partition and a swap partition.  The popup 
message said there was BIOS confusion and recommended rebooting with 
hda=784,255,63.  The second drive is an 18GB Western Digital which had been 
"zeroized" in preparation for disposal (badblocks -t 0x00 -w /dev/hdb).  No 
popup for it but the numbers were unexpectedly large.

Now I know that Linux can handle native (non LBA) numbers OK and I even have a 
Maxtor 80GB drive whose numbers got screwed up somehow and now I cannot get 
it to be recognized with LBA values (and yet another 80GB Maxtor works just 
fine with LBA).

Now I am perfectly willing to try anything with this system that has the 6.4GB 
drive (even screw up the harddisks) since it is being prepared for disposal 
(donation to charity).  I am willing to undertake any testing you might want 
me to try.

I am surprised that nobody has mentioned any problem like this yet.
-- 
Gene