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Date:      Wed, 1 Oct 1997 04:01:19 -0500
From:      Zach Heilig <zach@gaffaneys.com>
To:        Joerg Wunsch <joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de>
Cc:        current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Geometry weirdness with sysinstall/libdisk
Message-ID:  <19971001040119.61326@gaffaneys.com>
In-Reply-To: <19971001072648.MU20136@uriah.heep.sax.de>; from J Wunsch on Wed, Oct 01, 1997 at 07:26:48AM %2B0200
References:  <19970930223542.44057@keltia.freenix.fr> <19971001072648.MU20136@uriah.heep.sax.de>

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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



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