Re: Hard Drive Limitations
This just sounds weird to me. Managing disks and filesystems is done in
the kernel; there is very little a *distribution* can do to screw up
access at this level.
This is almost certainly a kernel problem. However, it is quite likely that
different distros have their kernels configured differently.
A 250 GB drive has to be ATA-6. ATA-5 drives have a size limit of 120 GB or so
because of the way sectors are addressed. ATA-6 increases the limit by
addressing the sectors differently in such a way that more of them can be
specified, and requires changes to the kernel. I'm not sure, but I could see
that changes to the partition map might be required too, so you might need a
later version of fdisk or what have you to support this.
However, looking through Configure.help in the kernel sources for 2.4.19 (the
latest on my box) didn't reveal any mention of ATA-6. Maybe you need a 2.6
kernel. Try this while in the Documentation directory of your kernel sources:
grep -i ata-6 Configure.help
grep -i ata6 Configure.help
This turns up matches of "ata66" which is a different thing, running the bus at
66 MHz.
If your knoppix cd has the .config file for the kernel it uses, compare that to
the .config for the kernel in your debian installation. Debian copies the
.config file to the /boot directory. Maybe you can find an option you need to
enable.
Mike
--
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting
http://www.goingware.com
crawford@goingware.com
Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow.
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out always. Be shunned, be hated, be ridiculed, be scared,
be in doubt, but don't be gagged."
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