It really sucks, basically. I found out that I had to track down the manufacturer of my large hard drive, get the specs from them, and then pass them on to cfdisk/fdisk and ignore the warnings that those programs gave me. I also remember that one of them sinply would not work (fdisk, I think), so I had to use cfdisk and specify the CHS specs. But then it worked great! I was installing SuSE at the time, which has cfdisk in the install ramdisk. Beware of strangeness - some drives have multiple CHS specs, as they respond to different 'virtual' setting.
-Percival On Sun, Mar 19, 2000 at 12:51:59PM -0800, Brian Lavender wrote: > How do you specify the CHS specs? > > THis has been a big delima. The Large Hard Drive HOW-TO talks about it, > and boom, doesn't say anything as far as how-to do it. > > brian > > On Sun, Mar 19, 2000 at 12:18:15PM -0800, Percival wrote: > > > > I have found that with large drives (8G+) you have to manually specify the > > CHS specs to fdisk (or cfdisk) when creating partitions, or you end up with > > non-reliable partitions (I suspect that this might be true with fdisk under > > DOS as well). > > > > I didn't think that ATA/66 specs added anything other than more data lines > > for faster data transfer. Are there new specs for controll as well? > > > > -Percival > > > > On Sat, Mar 18, 2000 at 09:46:10PM -0800, Brian Lavender wrote: > > > On Sat, Mar 18, 2000 at 09:41:43PM -0800, Percival wrote: > > > > > > > > Do you have more than one drive in the computer? > > > > > > Yes, in fact I am doing raid1. > > > > > > I built one half of the raid, transferred the files to the raid from > > > regular > > > partitions. changed the /etc/fstab to boot using the /dev/mdx devices, > > > rebooted, > > > did a hotraidadd on the original devices, and there I was. > > > > > > I have been able to totally boot from a floppy. I have the kernel rdev to > > > /dev/hdc6 which is one half of the raid. > > > > > > Now I have a little more to this story. I booted with a dos disk. I > > > formatted > > > the first disk with fat32, and the controller will totally boot to it. Now > > > I am trying to go back and reformat that disk, and hotraidadd that half to > > > it again. I also have the patched lilo, so it can boot a raid device. My > > > current > > > problem is I can't get fmt to recognize the whole disk. When I start > > > format, > > > it sees the 20 Gigs, but it says the existing partition is exceeding the > > > physical limits of the disk. In thought maybe I could just start adding > > > partitions, but it seems that once I reach 2 Gigs, that is the limit. So, > > > partitioning is first. Then back to making the Ultra 66 boot. > > > > > > Like I believe I said, I could create a dos partition on the disk. That > > > would be a yucky kludge though. > > > > > > brian > > > > > > > The reason I ask is that the error you are getting is far before linux > > > > gets involved. It seems to me that you have two partitions set active > > > > (DOS terms) that is, two partitions set bootable (normal term). > > > > > > > > Also, from what I understand, you do not need any special support or > > > > anything to use UDMA/66 drives - they are backward compatible. You > > > > should be able to boot just fine from stock boot disks. Get the system > > > > running first, then work on building a special kernel with full support > > > > for UDMA/66 to see the speed benefit. > > > > > > > > -Percival > > > > > > > > On Sat, Mar 18, 2000 at 09:32:29PM -0800, Brian Lavender wrote: > > > > > On Sat, Mar 18, 2000 at 02:34:16PM +0100, J.H.M. Dassen Ray" wrote: > > > > > > On Fri, Mar 17, 2000 at 21:32:35 -0800, Brian Lavender wrote: > > > > > > > but it just flashes the characters > > > > > > > > > > > > > > 2FA: > > > > > > > > > > > > That's from the Master Boot Record program. > > > > > > > > > > I guess you are correct about this, because I took the drive and > > > > > reformated it with dos, and it was able to boot. Does this mean > > > > > I am going to have to create a dos partition on the disk, and put > > > > > loadlin in it with the kernel, and have an autoexec which will in > > > > > turn boot linux? > > > > > > > > > > Now, I did find the IDE patches, and I was able to create a boot disk > > > > > that will boot my system and find the drive on the controller. It > > > > > would > > > > > just be nice if that MBR with lilo could start up my disk. > > > > > > > > > > I will have to take a closer look at the UDMA howto. In the meantime, > > > > > I am having trouble with fmt seeing the full size of the disk. I have > > > > > the Large Drive HOWTO, but that does not seem to tell me exactly what > > > > > I need to type in, so fmt will use the proper parameters and see the > > > > > full > > > > > 20 Gigs. > > > > > > > > > > Side note, my scsi system sure does seem a whole lot easier. Perhaps > > > > > twice > > > > > the price for the same drive space is not so bad after all. > > > > > > > > > > brian > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > I also tried booting with a floppy with IDE support, but it won't > > > > > > > detect it either. > > > > > > > > > > > > The bootfloppies for Slink don't handle UDMA66. You need to use > > > > > > bootfloppies > > > > > > with a kernel on them that's patched for UDMA66 support (using the > > > > > > IDE > > > > > > patches from ftp.kernel.org:/pub/linux/kernel/people/hedrick/). I'm > > > > > > not sure > > > > > > if potato's bootfloppies (will) support UDMA66. > > > > > > > > > > > > HTH, > > > > > > Ray > > > > > > -- > > > > > > UNFAIR Term applied to advantages enjoyed by other people which we > > > > > > tried > > > > > > to cheat them out of and didn't manage. See also DISHONESTY, > > > > > > SNEAKY, > > > > > > UNDERHAND and JUST LUCKY I GUESS. > > > > > > - The Hipcrime Vocab by Chad C. Mulligan > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > > > > > Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null > > > > > > > > > > -- > > > > > Brian Lavender > > > > > http://www.brie.com/brian/ > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > > > > Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > > Brian Lavender > > > http://www.brie.com/brian/ > > -- > Brian Lavender > http://www.brie.com/brian/
