Bug#485790: generate separate /boot as workaround for buggy LBA48 ?
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 12:58:13PM +0200, Frans Pop wrote:
> On Wednesday 11 June 2008, Robert Millan wrote:
> > This is not a bug about a problem I found, but about a problem I think
> > can become common with the introduction of >2 TiB disks.
> >
> > A while ago, I found that bochsbios (the free BIOS used by bochs and
> > qemu) had an incomplete implementation of LBA48 that caused a fatal
> > error when attempting to access a disk sector above 2^32:
>
> There is also the (already current and somewhat common, see e.g. #481169)
> issue described here:
> http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/GRUB#Error_18
Earlier instances of the same problem. The 8 GiB barrier was because of
the BIOS only issuing one 24-bit ATA command. I'm not sure how common will
the new limit be in comparison.
> I wonder what we should do about this:
> - just always create a /boot partition when guided partitioning is used
> - add some special cases, but how to reliably detect them?
> - always ask if a separate /boot should be created (or probably better:
> create separate recipes for that)
> - only document the issues and how to solve them manually
The problem with attempting to detect this bug, is that there's a chance our
probe causes the BIOS to crash, or abort with fatal error. I think this would
outweight the benefit.
--
Robert Millan
<GPLv2> I know my rights; I want my phone call!
<DRM> What good is a phone call… if you are unable to speak?
(as seen on /.)
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