I apologize for the off topic message, but there are more Linux gurus
here than anywhere else I know. I just upgraded to an SMP and have spent
the last several days upgrading peripherals and software as well. Today I
received a SCSI CDR drive and installed it. I fiddled a little with the
Adaptec SCSI BIOS in an attempt to put my SCSI HDD and CDR on different
channels of the 2-channel controller (Adaptec 7895). At some point I
noticed that my hard-drive was still being recognized in the boot sequence
as /dev/sda, but my CDR was no longer being recognized as /dev/sr0. Since
I had just recompiled my kernel a few times to create a boot disk (in
anticipation of problems), I thought the two might be related and so I
recompiled the kernel.
When I ran lilo, I received amessage I've never seen before:
Warning: /dev/sda is not on the first disk
but it was followed with the "Adding linux*" etc. messages.
Upon rebooting all I got in place of the LILO prompt was 'LI' and the
computer hung. I tried several hardware/BIOS changes (moving the HDD to
the other channel, changing the channel boot order), but always got the
same result. When I tried my boot disk, it too had a problem: I had
specified the wrong root partition.
Fortunately I have access to another computer (which unfortunately runs
Win98) and was able to download a boot image from slackware.com.
I managed to mount my root partition although for some reason, mount
complained that the filesystem was unmounted in read-write mode (or
something to that effect). This was disconcerting since I did a proper
shutdown after my kernel rebuild.
Upon running lilo now, I get a much more frightening error sequence:
Warning: /dev/sda is not on the first disk
Warning: device 0x0803 exceeds 1024 cylinder limit
geo_comp_addr: Cylinder number is too big (3203 > 1023)
fdisk /dev/sda returns:
The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 4101.
This is larger than 1024, and may cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
Printing the partition table gives me:
Device Boot Begin Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 1 2048 2096451 6 DOS 16-bit >=32M
Partition 1 does not end on a cylinder boundary:
phys=(260, 254, 63) should be (260, 63, 32)
/dev/sda2 1286 2048 3075 1052257+ 5 Extended
Partition 2 does not end on a cylinder boundary:
phys=(391, 254, 63) should be (391, 63, 32)
/dev/sda3 2441 3075 4032 979965 83 Linux native
Partition 3 does not end on a cylinder boundary:
phys=(513, 254, 63) should be (513, 63, 32)
/dev/sda4 3587 4032 4095 64260 82 Linux swap
Partition 4 does not end on a cylinder boundary:
phys=(521, 254, 63) should be (521, 63, 32)
/dev/sda5 1286 2048 3075 1052226 6 DOS 16-bit >=32M
Verifying the partition table gives me:
Partition 1 does not end on a cylinder boundary:
phys=(260, 254, 63) should be (260, 63, 32)
Partition 1: head 255 greater than maximum 64
Partition 1: sector 127 greater than maximum 32
Partition 3 does not end on a cylinder boundary:
phys=(513, 254, 63) should be (513, 63, 32)
Partition 3: head 255 greater than maximum 64
Partition 3: sector 191 greater than maximum 32
Partition 4 does not end on a cylinder boundary:
phys=(521, 254, 63) should be (521, 63, 32)
Partition 4: head 255 greater than maximum 64
Partition 4: sector 191 greater than maximum 32
Warning: partition 3 overlaps partition 4.
Partition 5: head 255 greater than maximum 64
Partition 5: sector 127 greater than maximum 32
Warning: partition 1 overlaps partition 5.
Warning: partition 3 overlaps partition 5.
Logical partition 5 not entirely in partition 2
12945 unallocated sectors
It looks pretty bad, but for the life of me, I can't think of what might
have happened. Running LILO was the only thing I did after kernel
compilation and before rebooting. Other information about the system
follows:
Dual PIII-450
Gigabyte GA-BXDS motherboard with on board Adaptec 7895 dual channel UW
SCSI. On channel A, ID0 (68-pin)
Teac CDR56S SCSI CD-R on channel A, ID1 (50-pin)
Quantum XP34300W Wide SCSI-2 4.1Gb HDD
Netgear FA310TX 10/100 PCI ethernet
ATI Graphics Pro Turbo 1600 PCI video card
USR Sporster 33.6 ISA PnP modem
Notable kernel params:
MTRR BIOS fix
RTC support
SCSI HDD, SCSI CD-ROM
Tulip PCI network driver
My system is usable, although I'm afraid to try rebooting it again for
fear I'll never get any of my data back. Please email me at
[EMAIL PROTECTED] and I'll be happy to provide you with any additional
info. Again sorry for being off topic, but I hope someone here can
untangle this mess.
J. Adam Butts
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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