Re: Help(!) with Slink install -- disk repartitioning problem
Hai Chris,
> info on large disc problem snipped
I'm no HD-guru, actually no guru at all, but I think I've dealt with a
similar problem here, so...
I think you hit the 8Gig limit. Older BIOSses can't cope with large disks
(they won't pass the correct info onto the OS or something to that effect),
but linux can cope, once told the size and the geometry of the disc.
Here are the steps I took (but please do read the Large-Disc-HOWTO):
1: Look up the LBA geometry your BIOS tells the disc has
2: pass this info to any Linux kernel used
step 2 is a little tricky in that the install allready uses a linux kernel.
IIRC the install starts with a boot line, at which you can type in a
different kernel or any kernel parameters. type here something like:
boot: linux hda=1826,255,63
(use different numbers, those worked for my 15Gig drive!!!)
and after install you should add to /etc/lilo.conf a line like
append="hda=1826,255,63" #again, change the numbers!!!!!!!!
run lilo, and all should be fine, I hope
> We went into the BIOS setup, and checked the disk information from
> there. Here is what it reported about the drive:
>
> Cylinders 17475
> Heads 15
> Sectors 63
> Max Capacity 8455 MB
>
> LBA Format
the LBA format line should give you Cyls/heads/secs numbers too, use those.
if you can't find those, I guess you could calculate your own
> I don't know much about hard drives, and don't really know what LBA
> is, but the apparent loss of disk capacity seems somewhat similar to
> the difference in capacity between the two "Max Capacity" lines
> listed. Is the second capacity somehow illusory, or available to DOS
> but not Linux?
no it's real, on LBA: look it up in the Large-Disc-HOWTO
> After I set up partitions for Linux to use as much disk as fdisk would
> let me, fdisk reports the following:
>
> Disk 240 heads, 63 sectors, 1024 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 15120 x 512 bytes
>
> Device Boot Start End Blocks ID Sys
> /dev/hda1 * 38 824 594XXXX c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
> /dev/hda2 1 37 28XXXX a0 Unknown [laptop suspend part.]
> /dev/hda3 825 842 136080 82 Linux Swap
> /dev/hda4 843 1024 137XXXX 93 Linux native
>
> [X's fill in the digits I didn't copy to my notepad]
>
> Note that the disk geometry is totally different than what was listed
> from the BIOS -- I don't know if this is meaningful, or related to the
> apparently-missing disk space. Does fdisk always assume a maximum of
it is exactly the missing area!
> 1024 cylinders? Should I use the expert mode of fdisk to manually
> supply the disk geometry information from the BIOS and then re-make
yes, but not necessary once you've told the kernel at boot time the
geometry to use. Be carefull though, the kernel doesn't check it, so
any errors in the geometry might destroy your harddisk!
> the Linux partitions, or will this totally destroy the data currently
> on the disk (in the Win95 partition)?
not if you use the proper geometry:)
--
groetjes, carel
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