How are protected/hidden partitions (-> IBM Thinkpad) treated by different kernel versions - Was : Parted still fails to see partitions

[<mzenker@gnotometrics.de>]

Hi,

I have examined kernel logs (from dmesg) obtained with different Linux/kernel versions on my IBM Thinkpad R50, where I still want to install Sarge using d-i.

Here is what I found:

######################################################

* Knoppix 3.4/Kernel 2.4:
uname -a: Linux Knoppix 2.4.23-xfs #1 SMP Mi Dez 10 22:25:03 CET 2003 i686 GNU/Linux
dmesg:
hda: host protected area => 1
hda: 78140160 sectors (40008 MB) w/1740KiB Cache, CHS=5168/240/63

* Knoppix 3.4/Kernel 2.6:
uname -a: 
dmesg:
hda: Host Protected Area detected.
	current capacity is 70984690 sectors (36344 MB)
	native  capacity is 78140160 sectors (40007 MB)
hda: Host Protected Area disabled.
hda: 78140160 sectors (40007 MB) w/1740KiB Cache, CHS=65535/16/63

* d-i/Kernel 2.6 (daily build from 31 Aug 2004):
uname -a: Linux notebook-mz 2.6.7-1-386 #1 Thu Jul 8 05:08:04 EDT 2004 i686 unknown
dmesg:
hda: Host Protected Area detected.
	current capacity is 70984690 sectors (36344 MB)
	native  capacity is 78140160 sectors (40007 MB)
hda: 70984690 sectors (36344 MB) w/1740KiB Cache, CHS=65535/16/63, UDMA(100)

* d-i/Kernel 2.4 (daily build from 31 Sep 2004):
uname -a: Linux notebook-mz 2.4.27-1-386 #1 Fri Sep 3 06:24:46 UTC 2004 i686 unknown
dmesg:
hda: Host Protected Area detected.
	current capacity is 70984690 sectors (36344 MB)
	native  capacity is 78140160 sectors (40008 MB)
hda: 70984690 sectors (36344 MB) w/1740KiB Cache, CHS=70421/16/63, UDMA(100)

d-i/Kernel 2.6 (daily build from 13 Sep 2004):
uname -a: Linux notebook-mz 2.6.8-1-386 #1 Mon Aug 16 03:02:48 EDT 2004 i686 unknown
dmesg:
hda: Host Protected Area detected.
	current capacity is 70984690 sectors (36344 MB)
	native  capacity is 78140160 sectors (40007 MB)
hda: 70984690 sectors (36344 MB) w/1740KiB Cache, CHS=65535/16/63, UDMA(100)

###################################

Apparently different kernel versions treat this protected partition on the disk in a different way (it is the Windows recovery partition which seems to exist on all Thinkpads).

The partition table as seen by fdisk is the following (d-i/Kernel 2.6, daily build from 13 Sep 2004):

Disk /dev/discs/disc0/disc: 36.3 GB, 36344161280 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4694 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 = 7741440 bytes

                Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/discs/disc0/part1   *           1        2349    17758408+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/discs/disc0/part2            4695        5168     3583440   41  PPC PReP Boot
/dev/discs/disc0/part3            2350        3321     7348320    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/discs/disc0/part4            3322        4694    10379880    5  Extended
/dev/discs/disc0/part5            3738        3805      514080   82  Linux swap
/dev/discs/disc0/part6            3806        4694     6720808+  83  Linux
/dev/discs/disc0/part7            3322        3737     3144928+  83  Linux

Parted fails/refuses to use the existing partition table apparently because it uses the "current", not the "native" capacity of the disk, and then sees a partition (part2) going past the end of the disk.

Since parted does not work in this case, the installation cannot be done using d-i.

So again my same question:

What can I do to install Sarge (except install Woody and dist-upgrade)?

Thank you for your patience,

Matthias


--------------------------------------------
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Dipl.Phys. Dr. Matthias Zenker
Entwicklung / Development
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