On Sat, 12 Jun 1999 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I ran slackware 3.0 with kernel 1.3.18 until last year and had no
> trouble with ext2 except hardware problems.
This is what I knew. But one question could be 'what if
Linux does the problems?'. So far, every Linux problem it came from
other sources. Now, I'm just frustrated because I don't know what's
the problem. Tonight I said what the fuck and did some tests. And
for sure there is something related with the dual part. I rebooted
again and again and there was no problem. I even did a power off
just in case there is a gremlin that likes to mess with my Linux.
And there was no problem. I booted windoze. And back to linux.
There was no trouble. I went back and did some work with windoze.
And linux told me that it's trying to read out of its partition.
How come?
> If you still have a 486, check if you have a CMD640 chip on the
> motherboard or ide board. The CMD640 VLB will make garbage of your HD
> unless you tell the IDE driver to take evasive action:
> ide0=cmd640_vlb
I had a 486. I still have it, but it was upgraded. Now I
have just a case with a mb and a proc. And I tell you that there
was no problem back when I used the 486, besides lacking space.
With my k6/2 I even got that far to switch from pio mode 4 to pio
mode 0.
> I have been bitten by this. Eventually it gets so bad you have to
> format the hd and start over. Even mkfs can't work until you format it.
> More recent versions of the IDE driver can detect the PCI version, but
> not the VLB. There are some other IDE interface chips that cause
> similar problems. Have a read of /usr/src/linux/Documentation/ide.txt.
> A kernel significantly older than the hardware _could_ cause a problem
> like this: you can't program around broken hardware that didn't exist
> when you wrote the code. :-). If RH 4.2 uses a 2.0.x kernel, you should
> be able to drop 2.0.36 in on top of it and not do any harm. Might even
> do a power of good.
Hmm... in a way I would want to wait till I solve this
problem. It can get to erasing all and repartition the new drive
again. And my old one isn't big enough for all stuff I want to
keep. The patches will be one thing.
So I preffer to wait and maybe I get lucky and someone I
know gets a copy of rh6.0. I preffer slackware. But AFAIK rh is
the only distribution that includes a 2.2.x kernel. And the 2.2.x
kernel needs almost all software I have to be upgraded. And it's
over 10m in size. I use the web account of a pal, over a louzy
phone connection with a 14.4k modem. I can't afford to make a large
download.
> I dropped 2.0.30 on top of 1.3.18, and the only things that broke were
> ps and top. I don't recommend switching major versions like that, but
> for the same major version it should work fine.
>
> There are 2 sets of numbers in the partition table, a 3 byte chs thing,
> and a long int bogical block address. The chs thing is rather limited
> in what it can describe, especially if you don't (or can't) use "LBA"
> mapping in the BIOS. Fdisk checks both, and complains if there is any
> inconsistency. What does cfdisk say?
I have lba. But here can be a problem... maybe you found my
problem. So Linux detects the drives, without help from bios. I've
seen it first, a year ago when a friend came over with a hard drive
and after doing the hardware mounting, I forgot to autodetect it in
bios. And linux worked with that 'undetected' drive very well.
dmesg says that my drive is LBA. But bios reports it as normal.
Can this be the problem? windoze works with bios... what is the
difference? How can it be changed? Is there a non destructive
manner to solve it?
Sorry. maybe this is stupid. I mean all I know is that
bios makes one conversion from cylinders to heads or the other way
around when it's LBA and doesn't do that conversion when the drive
is in 'normal' mode. Can this lead to problems? The way I think it
is: there can be problems with reffering in a different way, but
only inside partions, not for the whole drive.
fdisk (when using v) says that partition 2 overlaps 3, 3
overlaps 5 (4 is the real extended partition and 3 is the dos
extended partition), 5 -> 6 and so on.
I didn't knew tabout cfdisk. rh installed it for me. ;-) It
says: 'FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition\nPress any key to exit
fdisk'.
BTW: in fdisk, what is the difference between the begin
field and start field?
> It's a hashed filesystem, split into sections or block groups, each of
> which has part of the directory and available space structure. I don't
> know where there is any good doco on it.
Does anybody know a good description? I know, I can do the
hack and try to read the sources, and try to figgure it out from the
way it's used. But that is a bit too difficult... although I know
C.
> IIRC, RH 4.2 had a 2.0.x kernel and libc 5. If so, slackware stuff up
2.0.30 to be more specific. And libc5 just like SW.
> to slackware 3.6 should work, if that is still on the slackware ftp
> sites. RH 5.0 doesn't seem to have dosfsck, either?! I am really
I have no idea. The latest linux distros I had were rh4.2
and zipslack 3.6. But I don't like the zipslack way. And at the
same time, the magazine that published the CD twisted some things.
> getting to like slackware. :-). dosfsck isn't very big. I can gzip,
> uuencode and mail you a libc5 binary, or dig out the source and mail you
> a tar.gz, if you like. Same for bpe.
The tar.gz with the sources I guess can do the trick. If
this isn't too much trouble of course. But my problem was not
related with libc5 (I know that) but with the functions of the
kernel. Doesn't dosfsck use at least the declarations from kernel?
> You could use dd to copy the first block, and dump it with od or
> hexdump or so. Or I can mail you bpe. It looks to me like _something_
> is writing garbage on /dev/hda2.
I got it. The tar.gz with the sources. And here it is what
is returns:
Making bpe for Linux 0.96c
cc -o bpe -O bpe.o hexsrch.o -lcurses
ld: cannot open -lcurses: No such file or directory
make: *** [bpe] Error 1
And I have both ncurses and ncurses-devel (1.9.9e-4)
> Ace the exams!
Thanks.
Raider
--
``Liberate tu-temet ex inferis''
