Re: Ahah, 4096 blocksize disk is not recognised under Linux?

[Geert U. <ge...@li...>]

On 5 Jan 2003, Kulwant Bhogal wrote:
> I think these funny format disks of mine are the reason for the non
> detection. I suddenly discovered that there are many more menu selections in
> the Linux Installer and discovered a menu item called "List Partitions" (or
> something like that) and this is what it returned: 

So now you saw the `Launch shell' entry as well? :-)

> Partitions list
> 
> The following partitions have been detected: 
> 
> Device        Mounted On            Type
> /dev/sda1    --Not mounted--    FFS
> /dev/sda2    --Not mounted--    FFS
> /dev/sda3    --Not mounted--    FFS
> /dev/sda4    --Not mounted--    FFS
> /dev/sda5    --Not mounted--    FFS
> /dev/sda6    --Not mounted--    FFS
> /dev/sda7    --Not mounted--    FFS
> 
> Disk /dev/sdb has no partitons defined
> Disk /dev/sdc has no partitions defined

Aha, so it could be a problem with the partitioning support. Were these disks
partitioned under AmigaOS using HDToolBox? If yes, chances are high that the
Amiga RDB (Rigid Disk Block) support doesn't handle 4096-byte blocks yet.

> /dev/sdd1    --Not mounted--    FFS
> /dev/sdd2    --Not mounted--    FFS
> /dev/sdd3    --Not mounted--    FFS
> /dev/sdd4    --Not mounted--    FFS
> /dev/sdd5    --Not mounted--    FFS
> 
> /dev/hda1    --Not mounted--    FFS
> /dev/hda2    --Not mounted--    FFS
> /dev/hda3    --Not mounted--    FFS
> 
> where:
> 
> sda is a Compaq 18Gb with a 512 blocksize
> sdb is a Seagate Baracudda 4.8Gb with a 4096 blocksize
> sdc is a Seagate Baracudda 4.8Gb with a 4096 blocksize
> sdd is a Compaq 9Gb with a 512blocksize and
> hda is a Connor 420Mb with a 512 blocksize
> 
> And all of the disks have a number of partitions each. 
> 
> sdc is the drive I have set up the Linux partitions on. 
> 
> All the SCSI drives are second hand and the Seagates came with the 4096
> blocksize and no Amiga program has been able to low level format them with a
> 512 blocksize. Only a Seagate tool (which runs on PC only) is available for
> this job apparently. 

Just thinking of somethings:
  1. Is there a jumper on the drive to choose the blocksize?
  2. Does Linux recognize the blocksize during disk probing? E.g. for my disks
     it says
     | SCSI device sda: 8910423 512-byte hdwr sectors (4562 MB)
     | SCSI device sdb: 6281856 512-byte hdwr sectors (3216 MB)
     during startup.

> Given that the only spare space I have is on the 18Gb Compaq drive, is it
> safe to set up the Linux partitions on this drive? I don't want to risk
> anything because I remember that Shapeshifter (Macintosh Emulator) destoyed
> some partitions trying to initialise a Mac partition on a >4Gb disk of mine
> once. 

Should be safe. I never managed to corrupt my AmigaOS partitions from within
Linux. I know others did, but that was due to bugs in the linux AFFS support,
which were solved a long time ago.

> I am running OS3.9 but suspect that the patches to handle >4Gb disks are not
> active once Linux is booted?

Linux has its own support for disks, which handles the >4 GB case just fine.
Don't know about the Amiga partitioning support, though.

BTW, since your Compaq is much larger than 4 GB, what does
`cat /proc/partitions' say?

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

						Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- ge...@li...

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
							    -- Linus Torvalds