> I'm using a 2.6.10 kernel on the cdrom and Im testing the cd on an old Dell
> P3-500 Mhz with an IBM ATA 20GB drive. Works pretty good with 1 exception:
>
> Disk utils cannot read the drive geometry of IDE hardrive on the booted
> system. Here's why...
>
> my 2.6.10 kernel IDE driver detects the HD geometry at boot time as:
> 44150400 LBA sectors CHS: 43800/16/63
>
> This is good.
>
> The proc filesystem shows in /proc/ide/ide0/hda/geometry:
> physical 16383/16/63
> logical 43800/16/63
>
> Although the pysical is the kernel saying.. "uh.. bigger than 8GB..." The
> logical is correct... This is good.
>
> hdparm -g /dev/hda shows:
> 43800/16/63
>
> This is good.
>
> {s,c,}fdisk -l /dev/hda says:
> /dev/hda 82220544 bytes, 82MB, 16 heads, 63 sectors, 159 Cylendars
>
> This is BAD! It appears that the disk utils are using the (incorrectly
> reported) physical geometry instead of the logical. I know I can force the
> partition data in the kernel params but this is a bootable CD intended to run
> on not just 1 machine so that isn't a valid option. I can manually force
> the partitions in fdisk, but I don't want to have to do that on every machine
> I use my cd on.
>
> If I boot a 2.4.x kernel on the same machine (knoppix cd) the
> /proc/ide/ide0/hda/geometry reports :
>
> physical 43800/16/63 (note: this it the same as "logical" on 'my' boot cd)
> logical 2748/255/63
>
> and fdisk, hdparm, parted etc. all work correctly.
>
> Any Ideas what is going on?
What's going on is that the 2.4 kernel is running it as lba and the
2.6 kernel as chs, and the latter is screwing up.
The IDE hardware system is a pyramid of lies built on a blinkered OS
design in the past.
There is no right and wrong, really, it's just a question of matching
lies up. If you tell your wife a plausible lie, she just might believe
you. If you give her half of one excuse, and half of another, you're
in big trouble:-).
Of interest might be the hdparm -i and -I(shift_i) options which offer
various choices of information retrieval. Check what is stored on the
drive info is correct..
I think what is happening is that CHS is screwing up it's
interpetation of the Drive size. Bios settings can be important here.
I'm really not well enough up on CHS and the windows versions of large
drive handling to be much help beyond that off my own machine.
--
All the Best
Declan.
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