passing real geometry of hard disk to Linux

[Robert L Cochran]

Well, what is your motherboard name and version and your BIOS version? 
Your present motherboard and CPU must be extremely old by today's standards.

What version of Fedora Core are you trying to install?

Check to see if there are BIOS updates available to you. Update your 
BIOS first. Then install Fedora.

If you can afford it, a better option might be to replace the 
motherboard, CPU, and memory.

Bob Cochran
Greenbelt, Maryland, USA


Parameshwara Bhat wrote:

>
> Dear List,
>
> ( This was posted earlier. but I believe was not seen by the list. )
>
> I want to pass on the real geometry of my new hard disk to linux 
> kernel at  a new
> (Fedora) installation boot time. How is it done ? There must be a way 
> as  other Linuses do it.
>
> I have attached a new 40 GB hard-disk to IDE0 bus as slave. My BIOS from
> 1999 has a limitation ( so it appears ) and unless I put a jumper for 
> 33.2
> GB limiting, hangs at boot time. But SUSE and Knoppix both have the
> smartness to understand this and provide full capacity of 38.2 GB
> ( 4865,255,63 CHS), GRUB also has no problem once LBA mode is set. I am
> trying to reinstall my Fedora on a larger partition of this new drive.
> Partitions are created using Qtparted in knoppix and Windows xp and
> knoppix already reside on the disk. Anaconda only sees capacity at what
> BIOS gives it (4111,255,63 CHS ),  thinks disk partitions are beyond the
> disk ( ! )  and wants to reinitialise the Disk . I tried passing "linux
> hdb=4865,255,63" at  "boot : " which is ignored.
>
> Thanking in advance,
>
> Parameshwara Bhat