🚀 go-pugleaf

freemant@wr.com.au (Kent Tong) writes:
>There is a mini-howto dealing with installing Linux on large EIDE
>drives. The procedures include telling the kernel the real disk
>geometry on the command line. Is this still required (ie, is the
>how-to up-to-dated)?

Not if your BIOS supports LBA translation mode. Here is what my system reports:

hda: IBM-DJAA-31700, 1628MB w/96kB Cache, LBA, CHS=827/64/63
hdb: Maxtor 7540 AV, 514MB w/32kB Cache, LBA, CHS=523/32/63
hdd: FX001DE, ATAPI CDROM drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15

All the programs I have used (DOS FDISK, Linux fdisk, LILO and Linux itself)
are quite happy to use the geometry listed above. I think this worked even back
with 1.2.13.

>If so, how and when do I provide these parameters
>when I install from RedHat v3.03?

I have never needed to provide them (except once when I put a drive on ide1 -
then the BIOS knows nothing about it and Linux sees the "real" geometry, not
the one it was fdisked with).

N.B. Yes, my ATAPI CD-ROM drive is a master-less slave. I did have a 3rd HD
at one point and the dos driver for my EIDE card did not like it as the slave
and when I removed it I forgot to rejumper the CD-ROM. Linux 2.0 is happy with
this state of affairs so I will leave it that way.
-- 
David Wilson	Dept CompSci Uni Wollongong Australia	david@cs.uow.edu.au