Re: 2048 byte sector size MO and 2.1.12x

Harvey Fishman (fishman@panix.com)
Sat, 14 Nov 1998 17:18:06 -0500 (EST)


On Sat, 14 Nov 1998, Stefan Helfert wrote:

> I thought that the 2.1 kernels can support media with blocksizes of 2048
> byte (eg. Fujitsu MO with 640 MB) without patches, but mount (version
> 2.6g or version 2.8a) does not work with it.
>
> What tools do I need to update ?

As far as I know there has never been patches added to do blocking and
deblocking i.e. if you are working with a file system such as MS-DOS or
NTFS or HPFS where the physical and logical blocks are different sizes,
then you are SOL. As I said, I have never heard of a fix. I hope that
someone jumps in and tells that that I am FOS. Until then I only use 230
MB media for cases where interoperability between my NT system and the
Linux system are necessary.

But if you are working with e2fs files systems, then you are in good shape.
All you have to do is tell mke2fs to use 2K blocks when it writes the file
system to the medium. As I remember the switch is -b 2048. Similarly, if
you are writing to the raw umounted medium with things like tar, there are
no real problems although GNU tar did send me some nastygrams that it
appeared could be just ignored.

Harvey

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Harvey Fishman |
fishman@panix.com | A little heresy is good for the soul.
718-258-7276 |

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