From owner-freebsd-hackers Sat Nov 11 20:04:12 1995 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) id UAA21473 for hackers-outgoing; Sat, 11 Nov 1995 20:04:12 -0800 Received: from time.cdrom.com (time.cdrom.com [192.216.222.226]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) with ESMTP id UAA21464 for ; Sat, 11 Nov 1995 20:04:07 -0800 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by time.cdrom.com (8.6.12/8.6.9) with SMTP id UAA14118; Sat, 11 Nov 1995 20:03:47 -0800 To: Juha Inkari cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: install trouble on 1104 SNAP In-reply-to: Your message of "Sun, 12 Nov 1995 02:48:01 +0200." <199511120048.CAA07640@lk-hp-20.hut.fi> Date: Sat, 11 Nov 1995 20:03:47 -0800 Message-ID: <14116.816149027@time.cdrom.com> From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk > "Fdisk" editor reported all sorts of drive geometries varying from > 4076 cylinders to 200000 cylinders. The values that it did not > complain to be incompatible with BIOS were 14703/13/44 > (cyl/heads/sectors). The drives "natural" geometry is 4076 cyls, 20 > heads, and average 103 sectors per track. > > With the fdisk editor, I tried one slice, two slice and totally > dedicated disk partitions (with different geometries) and run into > trouble with the disk label editor. Well, hang on now. You're trying to have your cake and eat it too! :) If you're going to use partitions, then you MUST MUST MUST use the *right* geometry, and that rarely has anything to do with the "natural" geometry. Read the docs (and don't use expert mode - you've just disqualified yourself :-) that say how to determine the correct geometry using the various DOS utilities provided in the tools/ directory, or install a small DOS partition (as recommended by those same docs) and let FreeBSD "snoop" on it. If you don't want to think about geometry then use the "(A)ll" disk feature and choose the "dangerously dedicated" option to really and truly use the *entire* disk for FreeBSD. Then geometry becomes irrelevant. It's all in the docs! It's all in the docs! :-) Jordan