Re: 2.4.x kernels, big ide disks and old bios

[Josep Lladonosa i Capell]

Andre Hedrick wrote:

> You have it called "STROKE".
>
> Use a patch and execute a soft-clip operation to the device and you are
> fixed.

...depends. I want the big disk to be /dev/hda, and bootable (an unattended
boot).

Disk is  119150/16/63. I soft (un)clipped it to max capacity (60Gb) with setmax
.

Configured it in the bios (32Gb limit) as a smaller disk, bios complained,
telling an error, asking to press F1 to continue. The LBA mode (4111/255/63,
LBA, for example) told the error, and asking for F1, as well. With
(65530/16/63, NORM), it booted well.
Kernel (2.4.17, patched) corrected the geometry while booting, but mke2fs
generated many io-errors, I suspect beyond the 32Gb.

Finally, a bios upgrade (unfortunately not for sizes beyond 32Gb), let me to
configure the setup with
the LBA mode, and boot works well, and mke2fs doesn't complain.

I don't need to use setmax to clip-unclip when booting.

What's the meaning of the 65535 max limit in bios_cyl? *

*I don't think it is a kernel limit.
*Is it the max value accepted by the physical disk, and that's why lba is used?

*Was that the problem with the io-errors?

# cat /proc/ide/hdc/settings
name                    value           min             max             mode
----                    -----           ---             ---             ----
bios_cyl                119150          0               65535           rw
bios_head               16              0               255             rw
bios_sect               63              0               63              rw