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fdisk problems
Hi
I've installed IDE disk 3G but the BIOS can not handle properly disks
larger than 2G ( 4096 cylinders ). IDE Auto Detection in CMOS Setup
gets right values for disk geometry and also produces right bogus geometry
for LBA mode but instead of the real size of the disk it reports only the
size above 4096 cylinders ( in my case 1052 instead of 3166 ) in both LBA
and NORMAL mode. Now when I boot Linux the kernel always reports real geometry
for this disk regardless of chosen mode ( LBA or NORMAL ) in CMOS , though
for the first disk ( 1.3G ) it reports the bogus geometry ( I get it by
`dmesg' ).
So the first question is how it happens that kernel gets real geometry
while there is bogus one in CMOS ? Does kernel query the BIOS for disk
geometry or it talks directly to disk controller as I suppose the Auto
Detection in CMOS does ?
Now since the root partition is on the first disk ( 1.3G ) I shouldn't
have problems with LILO, so I thought I wouldn't have problems with the
large disk if I make only Linux partitions on it, despite the BIOS problems.
But when I tried to partition it I discovered that Linux fdisk is confused
about partitions starting beyond 1024 cylinders, namely `Begin' and `Start'
numbers are not the same. What does this mean anyway ? Can I ignore it ?
Another strange thing when I ran fdisk there was some strange message :
Warning: invalid flag 0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)
I've never seen such message before. Is something wrong with disk ?
Thank you
Boris.
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E-Mail: Boris Singerman <boris@ndc.soreq.gov.il>
Date: 08-Oct-97
Time: 12:56:19
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