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Date:      Tue, 24 Jan 1995 22:37:31 +0300 (????)
From:      Dmitry Khrustalev <dima@sunny.bog.msu.su>
To:        Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@ref.tfs.com>
Cc:        Terry Lambert <terry@cs.weber.edu>, freebsd-hackers@freefall.cdrom.com
Subject:   Re: disklabel (1.1.5.1), partitions
Message-ID:  <Pine.SOL.3.91.950124222808.17078B-100000@sunny>
In-Reply-To: <199501241823.KAA21387@ref.tfs.com>

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On Tue, 24 Jan 1995, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

> > > > Not all SCSI devices are thus translated?
> > > mostly they are, unless the "> 1GB" option is set.
> > 
> > Sorry, this isn't really a valid reason for lying about the geometry
> Hey terry, you lost the reason:  A scsi-disk >HAS< no geometry we should
> care about.

It seems you are wrong: you can query scsi-2 disk for it's geometry.
For details, see ftp://ftp.cdf.toronto.edu/pub/scsiinfo/scsiinfo-3.3.shar.gz

dima.

> 
> > > > Hold on! How about because the kernel should know the real BIOS apparent
> > > > geometry for instead of making things up like that?
> > > true, except we cannot trust this one anymore :-(  Some IDE and SCSI
> > > drivers get their "geometry" in CONFIG.SYS these days.
> > 
> > Actually, most EIDE controllers get them from a modified system boot block
> > installed by the OEM for the machine.  Blowing the system boot block in
> > that case really screws you up.
> No, 540Mb and above seems to get it from various "disk-managers" loaded
> in the config.sys with an increasingly annoying frequency.
> 
> > I don't understand... what's wrong with:
> > 
> > 	Geometry CCCC/HH/SS (Physical CCCC/HH/SS)
> The Physical isn't true, It's two years since I saw anything which added
> (multiplied actually) up to the number of sectors available.
> The numbers are fiction, make belive, has no use, value or connection
> with our use of the drive.
> 
> > > Has nothing to do with it.  If you pass some of the weird geometries to
> > > newfs it will become very confused...  32/64 works sensibly most of the
> > > time.
> > 
> > This is a bug in newfs, like the one where it doesn't create a lost+found,
> > not a reason to bogify other parts of the system to hack around it.
> Not true.  Newfs and UFS was optimized to know about disk-geometry.  Since
> most (95%) drives these days are zoned (variable sectors/track), this isn't
> of any particular use.  The existense of caches on the drives doesn't improve
> it either.
> All the geometry is really used for is to size the "cylinder"-groups.
> 
> -- 
> Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@login.dknet.dk>
> TRW Financial Systems, Inc.
> FreeBSD has, until now, not one single time had an undetected error. :-)
> 



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