Re: disk geometry problem
On 10/11/09, Nick Holland n...@holland-consulting.net wrote: Michael wrote: On 10/11/09, Fred Crowson fred.crow...@googlemail.com wrote: On 10/11/09, Michael ber...@opensuse.us wrote: I think I found the source of several problems on my hd. I have an 40 gig hd (WDC WD400BB-75DEA0) that right now has: #1: primary partition with Windows 2kpro #2: extended partition with Windows D partition, PCLinuxOS, and extra ext2fs partitions for files #3. end of hd has my primary partition with OpenBSD 4.4 OpenBSD and dos(partition magic) both show geometry of 4863,255,63 linux shows geometry of 4865,255,63). Actual sectors (even printed on hd) is 78125000, but linux shows 78156225. well, if Linux is not using those last two cylinders, don't sweat it, it Just Doesn't Matter. It only matters if you try to write something where nothing is. If I tell you the edge of the cliff is 100M. away, and someone else tells you it is 102M. away, and you are pretty sure that ONE of us is telling the truth, you can wander 100M minus your shoe size safely. The fact that we disagree doesn't mater, just don't go those last 2M. If OpenBSD is the more conservative report, and you have OpenBSD at the end of the disk, you should have no issues. I don't know what to do to fix that. don't even try. you will just break things. The systems have been running ok, but I can't mount the PCLinuxOS partition from OpenBSD is it ext2? if not, that would be expected. and when trying to install 4.5 or 4.6, I get the ERR M problem. totally unrelated. Could your machine your machine have a BIOS limitation? 32G is a not uncommon BIOS limitation, if you had your OpenBSD partition above that point, a BIOS upgrade would be high on my list of things to check. There were some motherboards shipping with buggy BIOSs with 32G issues long after much larger disks were commonplace. I use Windows strictly for powerpoint files and I don't get on the internet with it, linux for flash and other junk like that. OpenBSD is my main running system. Any help greatly appreciated. I tried google, but didn't see anything to fix this. How are you getting the various OS to boot? A bit more info would be a help... Fred Didn't think about that :) Was 2nd guessing what info would be needed (good info=OpenBSD vs bad info=linux). Right now, I'm using Air-Boot, but also have used grub. Ick. ok, what happens if you quit trying to be fancy, and just set the active partition to OpenBSD and quit trying to multiboot it? No Air-boot, no grub, just a standard MBR/PBR? Considering how some of those multi-boot programs try to help you, nothing surprises me when they break. The PBR (what is giving you the ERR M, see FAQ14) has a relatively small set of things that can go wrong. ERR M means that what it was installed to load is not (currently) /boot. This means either the BIOS delivered something other than /boot, or you are running a PBR that hasn't been updated since your last OpenBSD install (hint: some multiboot systems will save a copy of your PBR for them to use, instead of the one OpenBSD installs to boot the OS, and they rarely know when to update it when you reinstall the system!) or the /boot file got clobbered somehow. Nick. Thanks Nick for all the info. I had to sleep on it :) I don't know if we got off-track or I don't know/understand the problem. These systems have been booting and running for quite some time (years), except for when I do fresh installs of OpenBSD. No problems with the bootloader. I'm on OpenBSD now, so I can give this info: # disklabel wd0 # Extended partition 1: type 0F start 12562830 size 51568650 # Extended partition 1: type 05 start 13028715 size 25591545 # Extended partition 1: type 05 start 38620260 size 1028160 # Inside MBR partition 2: type A6 start 64131480 size 14024745 # /dev/rwd0c: type: ESDI disk: ESDI/IDE disk label: WDC WD400BB-75DE flags: bytes/sector: 512 sectors/track: 63 tracks/cylinder: 255 sectors/cylinder: 16065 cylinders: 4863 total sectors: 78125000 rpm: 3600 interleave: 1 trackskew: 0 cylinderskew: 0 headswitch: 64131480# microseconds track-to-track seek: 78125000 # microseconds drivedata: 0 16 partitions: #size offset fstype [fsize bsize cpg] a: 1028160 64131480 4.2BSD 2048 163841 b: 1060290 65159640swap c: 781250000 unused 0 0 d: 3084480 66219930 4.2BSD 2048 163841 e: 6152895 69304410 4.2BSD 2048 163841 f: 2265165 75457305 4.2BSD 2048 163841 i: 12562767 63 MSDOS j: 13028652 12562893 MSDOS k: 25591482 25591608 ext2fs l: 1028097 51183153 unknown m: 11920167 52211313 ext2fs fdisk wd0 Disk: wd0 geometry: 4863/255/63 [78125000 Sectors] Offset: 0
Re: disk geometry problem
On 10/11/09, Michael ber...@opensuse.us wrote: I think I found the source of several problems on my hd. I have an 40 gig hd (WDC WD400BB-75DEA0) that right now has: #1: primary partition with Windows 2kpro #2: extended partition with Windows D partition, PCLinuxOS, and extra ext2fs partitions for files #3. end of hd has my primary partition with OpenBSD 4.4 OpenBSD and dos(partition magic) both show geometry of 4863,255,63 linux shows geometry of 4865,255,63). Actual sectors (even printed on hd) is 78125000, but linux shows 78156225. I don't know what to do to fix that. The systems have been running ok, but I can't mount the PCLinuxOS partition from OpenBSD and when trying to install 4.5 or 4.6, I get the ERR M problem. I use Windows strictly for powerpoint files and I don't get on the internet with it, linux for flash and other junk like that. OpenBSD is my main running system. Any help greatly appreciated. I tried google, but didn't see anything to fix this. How are you getting the various OS to boot? A bit more info would be a help... Fred
Re: disk geometry problem
On 10/11/09, Fred Crowson fred.crow...@googlemail.com wrote: On 10/11/09, Michael ber...@opensuse.us wrote: I think I found the source of several problems on my hd. I have an 40 gig hd (WDC WD400BB-75DEA0) that right now has: #1: primary partition with Windows 2kpro #2: extended partition with Windows D partition, PCLinuxOS, and extra ext2fs partitions for files #3. end of hd has my primary partition with OpenBSD 4.4 OpenBSD and dos(partition magic) both show geometry of 4863,255,63 linux shows geometry of 4865,255,63). Actual sectors (even printed on hd) is 78125000, but linux shows 78156225. I don't know what to do to fix that. The systems have been running ok, but I can't mount the PCLinuxOS partition from OpenBSD and when trying to install 4.5 or 4.6, I get the ERR M problem. I use Windows strictly for powerpoint files and I don't get on the internet with it, linux for flash and other junk like that. OpenBSD is my main running system. Any help greatly appreciated. I tried google, but didn't see anything to fix this. How are you getting the various OS to boot? A bit more info would be a help... Fred Didn't think about that :) Was 2nd guessing what info would be needed (good info=OpenBSD vs bad info=linux). Right now, I'm using Air-Boot, but also have used grub.
Re: disk geometry problem
Michael wrote: On 10/11/09, Fred Crowson fred.crow...@googlemail.com wrote: On 10/11/09, Michael ber...@opensuse.us wrote: I think I found the source of several problems on my hd. I have an 40 gig hd (WDC WD400BB-75DEA0) that right now has: #1: primary partition with Windows 2kpro #2: extended partition with Windows D partition, PCLinuxOS, and extra ext2fs partitions for files #3. end of hd has my primary partition with OpenBSD 4.4 OpenBSD and dos(partition magic) both show geometry of 4863,255,63 linux shows geometry of 4865,255,63). Actual sectors (even printed on hd) is 78125000, but linux shows 78156225. well, if Linux is not using those last two cylinders, don't sweat it, it Just Doesn't Matter. It only matters if you try to write something where nothing is. If I tell you the edge of the cliff is 100M. away, and someone else tells you it is 102M. away, and you are pretty sure that ONE of us is telling the truth, you can wander 100M minus your shoe size safely. The fact that we disagree doesn't mater, just don't go those last 2M. If OpenBSD is the more conservative report, and you have OpenBSD at the end of the disk, you should have no issues. I don't know what to do to fix that. don't even try. you will just break things. The systems have been running ok, but I can't mount the PCLinuxOS partition from OpenBSD is it ext2? if not, that would be expected. and when trying to install 4.5 or 4.6, I get the ERR M problem. totally unrelated. Could your machine your machine have a BIOS limitation? 32G is a not uncommon BIOS limitation, if you had your OpenBSD partition above that point, a BIOS upgrade would be high on my list of things to check. There were some motherboards shipping with buggy BIOSs with 32G issues long after much larger disks were commonplace. I use Windows strictly for powerpoint files and I don't get on the internet with it, linux for flash and other junk like that. OpenBSD is my main running system. Any help greatly appreciated. I tried google, but didn't see anything to fix this. How are you getting the various OS to boot? A bit more info would be a help... Fred Didn't think about that :) Was 2nd guessing what info would be needed (good info=OpenBSD vs bad info=linux). Right now, I'm using Air-Boot, but also have used grub. Ick. ok, what happens if you quit trying to be fancy, and just set the active partition to OpenBSD and quit trying to multiboot it? No Air-boot, no grub, just a standard MBR/PBR? Considering how some of those multi-boot programs try to help you, nothing surprises me when they break. The PBR (what is giving you the ERR M, see FAQ14) has a relatively small set of things that can go wrong. ERR M means that what it was installed to load is not (currently) /boot. This means either the BIOS delivered something other than /boot, or you are running a PBR that hasn't been updated since your last OpenBSD install (hint: some multiboot systems will save a copy of your PBR for them to use, instead of the one OpenBSD installs to boot the OS, and they rarely know when to update it when you reinstall the system!) or the /boot file got clobbered somehow. Nick.
