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Date:      Thu, 02 Mar 2000 11:07:28 +1100
From:      Warren Welch <wwlists@intraceptives.com.au>
To:        freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   fdisk / disklabel issues...
Message-ID:  <4.2.1.20000302103756.05601b50@arthur.intraceptives.com.au>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0002292213410.62060-100000@resnet.uoregon.ed u>
References:  <200002282312.PAA15070@enginet.com>

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Hi all,

I've got a problem with a couple of machines...  The first time I saw the 
problem, I thought it was my hardware, but now I've encountered the problem 
on three different systems, all with different motherboards, and hard 
disks.  The only think in common, is that with all of them I'm working with 
FreeBSD 3.4, and that all the disks are LARGER than 12Gb IDE's.

One of the things that I notice are that the size of the disk that gets 
reported by the BIOS, and FreeBSD are totally different...  As an example, 
the following system reports:-

wdc0: unit 0 (wd0): <ST313021A>
wd0: 12419MB (25434228 sectors), 25232 cyls, 16 heads, 63 S/T, 512 B/S

from dmesg

yet, when I get the system BIOS to probe the disk, it reports:-
24062 cyls
16 heads
63 sects.

As you can see, FreeBSD recognizes the disk as larger than what it actually 
is.  I've found that if I partition the disk using the entire disk (fdisk 
-e wd0), then the last partition on the disk (the one that uses the last 
sectors on the disk) won't be newfs'd...

It's not at all good.  sysinstall also seems to have a problem with 
allowing you to set the geometry.  I'd expect that if I set the geometry to 
what the BIOS detects, and then say to use the entire disk, that it would 
use that defined geometry.  It doesn't...  The moment you say to use the 
entire disk, ('A', No), it resets the geometry to something it likes.  If I 
calculate the number of sectors manually (to what the bios detects), and 
then create a slice all things work fine within that slice.

I think there is something wrong with the way that FreeBSD is detecting the 
size of the disk.  (Interigating the disk that is...)  So far I've only had 
this problem with IDE disks.

Warren
wwelch@intraceptives.com.au



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