Quote:>I just sprang for a 1 GB Hewlett Packard disk (C2247) and I can't
>get Linux to fdisk/format it. When I try to do anything with
>fdisk, I get...
> You must set heads sectors and cylinders.
> You can do this from the extra functions menu.
> Command (m for help):
>Fdisk does see the drive and I can mount the DOS partition.
>I'm clueless as to cyl/heads/sector settings (calls are in
>to the vendor and mfgr).
You don't want what the disk really has, you want the mapping
used by the SCSI controller.
Quote:>However , the FAQ is ambiguous as
>to whether the provision of this information will actually
>solve the problem.
1. Newer versions of fdisk use the HDIO_GETGEO ioctl to ask
the device driver the disk's geometry. Newer versions
of the SCSI drivers respond to this ioctl with the
same mapping used by the SCSI controller.
If you are out of date, updating may fix the problem.
2. The future domain 1680 driver's handling of the HDIO_GETGEO
ioctl depends on a BIOS being present, since it reads
the mapped geometry from the on-board ram initialized
by the BIOS.
If you have no BIOS installed, this doesn't work. Either install
the BIOS, or look at the partition table and figure out what the
geometry is according to your driver software.
For DOS, everything ends on track or cylinder boundaries (everything
but the first partition).
#sectors - sectors are numbered 1 to N, so you can use the number of
the last sector in a partition as the number of sectors.
#heads - heads are numbered 0 to N, so if you take the ending head
of a partition and add one to it, you have the number of heads.
#cylinders - cylinders are numbered 0 to N, sometimes there is also a
final cylnder (the Customer Engineer cylinder) used for testing
where no data is stored.
So, take the highest ending cylinder number of your partitions,
and add 2 to it.
Or just divide size by sectors * heads.
Quote:>Also, when the machine boots, Linux recognizes the Future
>Domain controller (1680) but it says something like
>"Selection Failed" in the bootup chatter.
If it works, don't worry about it. You shouldn't get that
message, since it only appears during debugging.
Quote:>Also, there are
>two other IDE HDs on this machine.
That could explain why the future domain BIOS didn't record the
geometry of the disk.
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