You can pass drive geometry to the kernel with hda=C,H,S (i.e at installation screen you hit F1, then type $ linux hda=C,H,S). Unfortunately this doesn't solve any problem I had with the MDK9.1 installation, the problem must be elsewhere. Now I'm looking into DMA-related problems.
Lots of interesting information on the subject in the "Large disk howto v2.3". Looks like disk geometry is basically a non-issue in 99% of the cases...
raffaele
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I am trying to install 9.1 on a 370Mb HD taken from an old 486. The installation fails.
I discovered that the kernel uses wrong geometry parameters for the drive. The drive is a Conner CFS420A, the BIOS detects it correclty (665 cylinders, 16 head, 63 head/track), but /proc/ide/hda/geometry reports 200 cylinders more than that.
I tried to partition the drive manually with fdisk (you can force the cylinder number in there) and format with mkfs, then 'Use existing partitions' during the 9.1 installation, but no-go, installation still hangs.
The drive is ok, I FAT-formatted and scandisk'ed it under winddows with no errors.
Is there a way to pass the diwk geometry parameters to the kernel during installation?
thanks,
raffaele
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