On Mon, Jul 10, 2000 at 10:44:06PM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> Andries Brouwer wrote:
> >
> > If a program needs the partition starting point, it can use the
> > HDIO_GETGEO ioctl which returns a
> >
> > struct hd_geometry {
> > unsigned char heads;
> > unsigned char sectors;
> > unsigned short cylinders;
> > unsigned long start;
> > };
>
> Ah yes, this is what I was looking for. This should be sufficient for
> the time (at least until 2^32 sectors become an issue (2 TB disks).
Unfortunately it is an issue already today.
Several people complained to me about problems with a larger
than 1 TB RAID, where signedness problems start occurring.
And if 1 TB is used today then 2 TB is very close nearby.
Probably start will have to become a long long, and we need
an audit of the kernel source to see where things will fail.
If it turns out that the change is too complicated we can
get temporary relief by using a larger unit, like 4K blocks
instead of 512-byte sectors.
Andries
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