[ltp] T41 Recovery CD

[Eben King]

On Wed, 22 Sep 2004, Jan Kokoska wrote:

> On Wed, 2004-09-22 at 08:39 -0400, Eben King wrote:
> > On Wed, 22 Sep 2004, Jan Kokoska wrote:
> 
> > Well, when I created a partition with the SuSE installer, it extended onto
> > the HPA.  An unpatched kernel would not read this partition (although
> > SuSE's kernels would), so I'd guess that SuSE could dd over the HPA where
> > some systems could not.  Also, if you erase the current partition table
> > with fdisk (or maybe write a new one?), that may fix it.  Dunno; mine's 
> > still unfixed.
> 
> Creating the partition is one thing (writes to the first sector),
> creating a filesystem another (writing inode superblocks to whole disk
> including HPA). Were you able to create and mount an extX partition
> using SuSE kernel?

Sure.  Everything acted normal until I compiled my own (not from SuSE 
source) kernel.  Then I couldn't mount /usr until I rebooted under the 
SuSE kernel.  Took me a while to figure out what was the problem.

> I erased the whole disk with dd, standard procedure. When it got to the
> end where HPA lives, it bombed out, no matter what the BIOS settings
> were.

#include <IANAProgrammer.h>

My guess is it's setting max_disk_blocks from what the hardware says, then 
trying to access it through something which avoids the HPA.
 
> But you set me on track, it could be the kernel.. maybe it needs to do
> something special to convince the disk controller it is OK, once BIOS
> doesn't stand in the way.

Let me know how you get it to work.  I'll have to do the same thing to fix 
mine one of these days.

-- 
-eben    ebQenW1@EtaRmpTabYayU.rIr.OcoPm    home.tampabay.rr.com/hactar

   Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, 
   hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. -- H.L. Mencken