Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S265439AbTFXAR2 (ORCPT ); Mon, 23 Jun 2003 20:17:28 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S265450AbTFXAR2 (ORCPT ); Mon, 23 Jun 2003 20:17:28 -0400 Received: from 216-239-45-4.google.com ([216.239.45.4]:48328 "EHLO 216-239-45-4.google.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S265439AbTFXARV (ORCPT ); Mon, 23 Jun 2003 20:17:21 -0400 Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 17:31:24 -0700 From: Frank Cusack To: Andries Brouwer Cc: Luis Miguel Garcia , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Kernel & BIOS return differing head/sector geometries Message-ID: <20030623173124.A2025@google.com> References: <20030624010906.08ad32f3.ktech@wanadoo.es> <20030624013908.B1133@pclin040.win.tue.nl> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5.1i In-Reply-To: <20030624013908.B1133@pclin040.win.tue.nl>; from aebr@win.tue.nl on Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 01:39:08AM +0200 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1403 Lines: 30 On Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 01:39:08AM +0200, Andries Brouwer wrote: > Linux does not use the BIOS, and does not use CHS either, so geometry is > totally and completely irrelevant to Linux. Is that also true for 2.2? I've had problems where large drives (60+G) do these geometry tricks, and if I don't force the geometry to what I want, fdisk (actually, sfdisk, dunno about fdisk) doesn't see the entire drive. Sometimes the BIOS doesn't report the specific geometry that the kernel detects means "LBA" (I think this depends partly on drive firmware) and then the kernel writes out some goofy geometry to the partition table (I assume kernel geometry info is kept there?) and again I have problems accessing the entire drive. Also, if I later change the geometry, the previous partition table seems to become incorrect. This one really confuses me, shouldn't the partition table be indexed by sectors? Anyway, it's been a very long time since I've worked directly on this problem, so lots of my characterizations may be wrong. But I do know that we force the geometry to specific values in our install, to combat specific problems we've encountered. /fc - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/