Re: Promise Ultra 66
It really sucks, basically. I found out that I had to track down the manufacturer of my large hard drive, get the specs from them, and then pass them on to cfdisk/fdisk and ignore the warnings that those programs gave me. I also remember that one of them sinply would not work (fdisk, I think), so I had to use cfdisk and specify the CHS specs. But then it worked great! I was installing SuSE at the time, which has cfdisk in the install ramdisk. Beware of strangeness - some drives have multiple CHS specs, as they respond to different 'virtual' setting.
-Percival
On Sun, Mar 19, 2000 at 12:51:59PM -0800, Brian Lavender wrote:
> How do you specify the CHS specs?
>
> THis has been a big delima. The Large Hard Drive HOW-TO talks about it,
> and boom, doesn't say anything as far as how-to do it.
>
> brian
>
> On Sun, Mar 19, 2000 at 12:18:15PM -0800, Percival wrote:
> >
> > I have found that with large drives (8G+) you have to manually specify the CHS specs to fdisk (or cfdisk) when creating partitions, or you end up with non-reliable partitions (I suspect that this might be true with fdisk under DOS as well).
> >
> > I didn't think that ATA/66 specs added anything other than more data lines for faster data transfer. Are there new specs for controll as well?
> >
> > -Percival
> >
> > On Sat, Mar 18, 2000 at 09:46:10PM -0800, Brian Lavender wrote:
> > > On Sat, Mar 18, 2000 at 09:41:43PM -0800, Percival wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Do you have more than one drive in the computer?
> > >
> > > Yes, in fact I am doing raid1.
> > >
> > > I built one half of the raid, transferred the files to the raid from regular
> > > partitions. changed the /etc/fstab to boot using the /dev/mdx devices, rebooted,
> > > did a hotraidadd on the original devices, and there I was.
> > >
> > > I have been able to totally boot from a floppy. I have the kernel rdev to
> > > /dev/hdc6 which is one half of the raid.
> > >
> > > Now I have a little more to this story. I booted with a dos disk. I formatted
> > > the first disk with fat32, and the controller will totally boot to it. Now
> > > I am trying to go back and reformat that disk, and hotraidadd that half to
> > > it again. I also have the patched lilo, so it can boot a raid device. My current
> > > problem is I can't get fmt to recognize the whole disk. When I start format,
> > > it sees the 20 Gigs, but it says the existing partition is exceeding the
> > > physical limits of the disk. In thought maybe I could just start adding
> > > partitions, but it seems that once I reach 2 Gigs, that is the limit. So,
> > > partitioning is first. Then back to making the Ultra 66 boot.
> > >
> > > Like I believe I said, I could create a dos partition on the disk. That
> > > would be a yucky kludge though.
> > >
> > > brian
> > >
> > > > The reason I ask is that the error you are getting is far before linux gets involved. It seems to me that you have two partitions set active (DOS terms) that is, two partitions set bootable (normal term).
> > > >
> > > > Also, from what I understand, you do not need any special support or anything to use UDMA/66 drives - they are backward compatible. You should be able to boot just fine from stock boot disks. Get the system running first, then work on building a special kernel with full support for UDMA/66 to see the speed benefit.
> > > >
> > > > -Percival
> > > >
> > > > On Sat, Mar 18, 2000 at 09:32:29PM -0800, Brian Lavender wrote:
> > > > > On Sat, Mar 18, 2000 at 02:34:16PM +0100, J.H.M. Dassen Ray" wrote:
> > > > > > On Fri, Mar 17, 2000 at 21:32:35 -0800, Brian Lavender wrote:
> > > > > > > but it just flashes the characters
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > 2FA:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > That's from the Master Boot Record program.
> > > > >
> > > > > I guess you are correct about this, because I took the drive and
> > > > > reformated it with dos, and it was able to boot. Does this mean
> > > > > I am going to have to create a dos partition on the disk, and put
> > > > > loadlin in it with the kernel, and have an autoexec which will in
> > > > > turn boot linux?
> > > > >
> > > > > Now, I did find the IDE patches, and I was able to create a boot disk
> > > > > that will boot my system and find the drive on the controller. It would
> > > > > just be nice if that MBR with lilo could start up my disk.
> > > > >
> > > > > I will have to take a closer look at the UDMA howto. In the meantime,
> > > > > I am having trouble with fmt seeing the full size of the disk. I have
> > > > > the Large Drive HOWTO, but that does not seem to tell me exactly what
> > > > > I need to type in, so fmt will use the proper parameters and see the full
> > > > > 20 Gigs.
> > > > >
> > > > > Side note, my scsi system sure does seem a whole lot easier. Perhaps twice
> > > > > the price for the same drive space is not so bad after all.
> > > > >
> > > > > brian
> > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > > I also tried booting with a floppy with IDE support, but it won't
> > > > > > > detect it either.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > The bootfloppies for Slink don't handle UDMA66. You need to use bootfloppies
> > > > > > with a kernel on them that's patched for UDMA66 support (using the IDE
> > > > > > patches from ftp.kernel.org:/pub/linux/kernel/people/hedrick/). I'm not sure
> > > > > > if potato's bootfloppies (will) support UDMA66.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > HTH,
> > > > > > Ray
> > > > > > --
> > > > > > UNFAIR Term applied to advantages enjoyed by other people which we tried
> > > > > > to cheat them out of and didn't manage. See also DISHONESTY, SNEAKY,
> > > > > > UNDERHAND and JUST LUCKY I GUESS.
> > > > > > - The Hipcrime Vocab by Chad C. Mulligan
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > --
> > > > > > Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe debian-user-request@lists.debian.org < /dev/null
> > > > >
> > > > > --
> > > > > Brian Lavender
> > > > > http://www.brie.com/brian/
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > --
> > > > > Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe debian-user-request@lists.debian.org < /dev/null
> > > > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Brian Lavender
> > > http://www.brie.com/brian/
>
> --
> Brian Lavender
> http://www.brie.com/brian/
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