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Date:      Sun, 30 Jun 1996 23:26:23 +1000 (EST)
From:      Gary Roberts <garyr@ajax.wcs.uq.edu.au>
To:        100120.3121@CompuServe.COM (Berend de Boer)
Cc:        freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Help with fdisk
Message-ID:  <199606301326.XAA06963@ajax.wcs.uq.edu.au>
In-Reply-To: <960628200112_100120.3121_EHQ55-1@CompuServe.COM> from "Berend de Boer" at Jun 28, 96 04:01:12 pm

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Berend de Boer writes:

> I have a harddisk with a loose partition at the end. I like to make this
> available to FreeBSD, however I cannot get fdisk to work. Maybe someone can
> help?  I'm not sure if this is the right list to post, so if I'm wrong please
> direct me to the correct one (but I couldn't find a more appropriate list).

You probably would have been much better off sending this to -questions.

My impression (and someone will undoubtedly correct me if I'm wrong ;->.)
is that fdisk `wraps' the cylinder count after 1023 so that when you try
to get `1024' it is reported by fdisk as `0'.  This is quite off-putting
but harmless since fdisk seems to do the right thing and you will get your
new slice as you want.  I say this from experience as I have sliced up a
couple of large IDE disks this way with no problems.  You should have
proper backups of any critical data before you start this :->.

There is, however, something funny with the numbers you produce below.

> cylinders=1647 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 blks/cyl)

> The data for partition 0 is:
> sysid 4,(Primary DOS with 16 bit FAT)
>     start 63, size 41265 (20 Meg), flag 0
>         beg: cyl 0/ sector 1/ head 1;
>         end: cyl 40/ sector 63/ head 15

This looks fine -  41 cyls X 1008 blks/cyl = 41328  (ie. = 63 + 41265)

> The data for partition 1 is:
> sysid 165,(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
>     start 41328, size 1023120 (499 Meg), flag 80
>         beg: cyl 41/ sector 1/ head 0;
>         end: cyl 1023/ sector 63/ head 15

Now to me this is a puzzle.  If the size is 1023120 (ie. 1008 X 1015) then
the ending cylinder should be 1055 (41 + 1015 - 1) and not 1023.
My recollection is that fdisk would `wrap' and report the ending cylinder
as something like cyl 31 (1055 - 1024).  It was a fair while ago that I
did this so my memory may be faulty :->.

> I like to turn the 2nd partion to the 306MB I should have availabe. Using a
> calculator (..., anyone used NT's DiskManager?) I determined the startaddress
> and size, however I coudn't get fdisk to let this partition start at cilinder
> 1024, even when explicitly specifiying the beginaddress:
> 
> ---------------------------fdisk start---------------------------------------
> The data for partition 2 is:
> <UNUSED>
> Do you want to change it? [n] y
> Supply a decimal value for "sysid" [0] 165
> Supply a decimal value for "start" [0] 1032192
> Supply a decimal value for "size" [0] 627984
> Explicitly specifiy beg/end address ? [n]
> sysid 165,(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
>     start 1032192, size 627984 (306 Meg), flag 0
>         beg: cyl 0/ sector 1/ head 0;
>         end: cyl 622/ sector 63/ head 15
> Are we happy with this entry? [n] 
> ---------------------------fdisk end----------------------------------------

As I said, I would have expected fdisk to have reported the end of slice
(partition) 1 as being cyl 31 and not 1023 if the size was 1023120.  I would
expect the "start" of slice 2 to be 1064448 (41328 + 1023120) and not
1032192 as your example shows.  I would also expect the "size" to be 
595728 so that 1064448 + 595728 = 1660176 which is 1647 cyls.

Perhaps you could recheck your numbers?  From what you have supplied, the
ending cyl of 1023 for slice 1 seems to be bogus to me.  Maybe someone
else may wish to comment.

Cheers,
-- 
Gary Roberts  (garyr@wcs.uq.edu.au) (Ph +617 3844 0400  Fax +617 3844 0444)
4th Floor, South Bank House, 234 Grey St, South Bank  QLD 4101  Australia.



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