From owner-freebsd-current Wed Oct 1 02:03:02 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id CAA00202 for current-outgoing; Wed, 1 Oct 1997 02:03:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from murkwood.gaffaneys.com (dialup2.gaffaneys.com [208.155.161.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id CAA00193 for ; Wed, 1 Oct 1997 02:02:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from zach@localhost) by murkwood.gaffaneys.com (8.8.7/8.8.6) id EAA00964; Wed, 1 Oct 1997 04:01:19 -0500 (CDT) From: Zach Heilig Message-ID: <19971001040119.61326@gaffaneys.com> Date: Wed, 1 Oct 1997 04:01:19 -0500 To: Joerg Wunsch Cc: current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Geometry weirdness with sysinstall/libdisk References: <19970930223542.44057@keltia.freenix.fr> <19971001072648.MU20136@uriah.heep.sax.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.84 In-Reply-To: <19971001072648.MU20136@uriah.heep.sax.de>; from J Wunsch on Wed, Oct 01, 1997 at 07:26:48AM +0200 Sender: owner-freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Wed, Oct 01, 1997 at 07:26:48AM +0200, J Wunsch wrote: > But again, these values are largely irrelevant. If you need to make a > disk DOS-compatible, it's never a bad idea to create the DOS partition > first. If you don't want it DOS-compatible, why caring for a > ficticuous geometry at all? Well, as long as the values are fairly sane [i.e. allow a bios boot], there is no real reason I can see to care. However, I had to figure out a way to hammer my disk into submission. Its geometry was 62496c 2h 33s. It would barely start reading in the kernel when it would say: xxxx>1024 BIOS limit, and hang. I tried using disklabel to give it the 257c 255h 63s geometry that the controller expects, but the controller still saw the original bad geometry. I gave the 257c 255h 63s parameters to fdisk, and it actually modified the geometry (to 341c 192h 63s, instead of what I entered). Now, the controller and fdisk report 341c 192h 63s, with disklabel reporting 2014c 255h 63s. At least they all got the number of sectors right (4124736). There are some physical problems with the drive, so I don't care to actually fix these other (non-?)problems. -- Zach Heilig