Re: 2.6.x partition breakage and dual booting

[Patrick J. LoPresti]

Frediano Ziglio <freddyz77@xxxxxx> writes:

> Yes and not... HDIO_GETGEO still exists and report inconsistent
> informations. IMHO should be removed. I know this breaks some
> existing programs however these programs do not actually works
> correctly.

Existing programs work fine if you do something like this first:

    echo bios_head:255 > /proc/ide/hda/settings

I know this works because it is how I convince Parted to prep a blank
drive for installing Windows.  In fact, it is the only way for me to
communicate the geometry to Parted, as far as I know.  (Other tools
usually have command-line switches or "expert" settings to control the
geometry; Parted does not.)

SCSI and RAID devices already return a suitable geometry in
HDIO_GETGEO on all of the systems that I or my users have tried.

So one approach is to leave HDIO_GETGEO alone, and to have a userspace
gadget run early to "fix" the kernel's notion of the geometry.  This
would avoid the need to rewrite every partitioning tool.

 - Pat
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/