Something strange happened when I upgraded the kernel from 2.0.36 to 2.2.6:
The disk geometry as seen by lilo, fdisk, etc is now changed, and these
utilities can not be used any more without making the system unbootable.
In order to use them I have to boot 2.0.36 from a floppy, make the
changes and reboot 2.2.6.
The disk is an Wide SCSI Seagate ST19171W, and is seen by 2.0.36 with
1106 cylinders, and by 2.2.6 with 8683 cylinders.
Anybody has any clues what's going on? Is there any way, other than
repartitioning the disk and reinstalling the software, to make the
system consistent?
Ah, not so pessimistic!
SCSI geometry is invented by the SCSI driver - this concept of geometry
is in principle foreign to SCSI but invented by DOS.
Some authors of SCSI drivers thought it a good idea to let their driver
invent other geometries today than they did yesterday.
Since you do not mention what SCSI driver you use it is impossible
to look at the details for your particular driver. Some have the
possibility to use command line options.
> lilo, fdisk
> these utilities can not be used any more
> without making the system unbootable
This must be false for fdisk (as long as you are talking about Linux):
Linux does not use the geometry, and the LILO boot process does not
use the partition table, so regardless of what warnings fdisk may come
with, and regardless of what nonsense you write into the geometry part
of the partition table, it will not harm anything at all.
Concerning LILO things may be a bit different, but you can override
the geometry the driver invents, or you can give the `linear' option
so that LILO (the installer) need not have any geometry knowledge.
So - roughly speaking there are no problems, and what problems there
might be are very easy to solve.
(By the way, what SCSI driver is this? If I can find time I must
recheck all SCSI drivers and update the LargeDisk HOWTO, but the
hypothesis is a bit unlikely; I can at least update the things where
we know an update is needed.)
Andries - aeb@cwi.nl
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