On Fri, 15 Oct 1999, Robert Findlay wrote:
> The problem is that unless we get identical C/H/S values for the two hard
> drives we are bothered by having to reset the BIOS parameters for each swap.
>
> My question is:
> "Is there a way to avoid this with the Linux OS? ie. leave the BIOS set for
> the QNX drive and have the different Linux drive also boot without having
> to enter the BIOS and change things"
You can give the kernel a boot parameter line with IDE geometry that will
overide what's in the BIOS setings. See linux/Documentation/ide.txt in
your kernel source tree for details.
> The more I discover about the Linux boot sequence "onion" the closer I
> think I'm coming to an answer. I recently came across the lilo.conf
> "append" parameter which in conjunction with the "hd=" bootparam should be
> able to do the trick. The problem is that without the correct BIOS C/H/S
> values my machines never seem to get anywhere near lilo.
Since lilo uses the BIOS for disk access, it really needs the right
geometry to be set in the BIOS to work. So you might try booting from a
floppy (with lilo so a boot parameter can be passed to the kernel) if
possible.
Alternatively you could format both drives with the same track, head and
sector values (the smalest of both) which will allow both drives to boot
from BIOS settings. You'll probably loose space on one drive but the real
number of tracks can be redefined under Linux with a boot parameter
option.
Well, this is hackery but why not! :-)
Nicolas
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