Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1945975AbWBOPaL (ORCPT ); Wed, 15 Feb 2006 10:30:11 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1945983AbWBOPaK (ORCPT ); Wed, 15 Feb 2006 10:30:10 -0500 Received: from iriserv.iradimed.com ([69.44.168.233]:31644 "EHLO iradimed.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1945975AbWBOPaJ (ORCPT ); Wed, 15 Feb 2006 10:30:09 -0500 Message-ID: <43F348C2.2070305@cfl.rr.com> Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 10:29:06 -0500 From: Phillip Susi User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5 (Windows/20051201) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Alan Cox CC: Seewer Philippe , Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: RFC: disk geometry via sysfs References: <43EC8FBA.1080307@bfh.ch> <43F0B484.3060603@cfl.rr.com> <43F0D7AD.8050909@bfh.ch> <43F0DF32.8060709@cfl.rr.com> <43F206E7.70601@bfh.ch> <43F21F21.1010509@cfl.rr.com> <43F2E8BA.90001@bfh.ch> <58cb370e0602150051w2f276banb7662394bef2c369@mail.gmail.com> <1140016519.14831.18.camel@localhost.localdomain> In-Reply-To: <1140016519.14831.18.camel@localhost.localdomain> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-OriginalArrivalTime: 15 Feb 2006 15:31:41.0674 (UTC) FILETIME=[EB7E84A0:01C63244] X-TM-AS-Product-Ver: SMEX-7.2.0.1122-3.52.1006-14269.000 X-TM-AS-Result: No--7.600000-5.000000-31 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1434 Lines: 28 Alan Cox wrote: > The tools need to know the C/H/S drive addressing data for old drives > because it is used to determine partition tables. That doesn't have to > be GETGEO but it does need to exist somewhere. Currently GETGEO very often does not report the same values of the bios doesn't it? For some disks it's completely made up, and for others it is the value returned by the drive itself, which often differs from the bios values. If this is the case, and it is the bios values that must be stored in the MBR, then it makes little sense to have GETGEO seeing as how it often provides incorrect information. Wouldn't it be better then, to clean up GETGEO everywhere so that unless it has correct values from the bios, it should just fail? And leave it up to fdisk and friends to inform the user of that failure, choose default values, and allow the user to override those defaults should they need to? The only time they would even have to worry about it is if they are installing linux on a blank disk, and then want to install windows to dual boot with it. In that case they might have to correct the CHS values in the MBR to match the values the bios provides. - 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/