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

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

On 6 Jan 2003, Kulwant Bhogal wrote:
> > So now you saw the `Launch shell' entry as well? :-)
> 
> Yes, but I didn't know what the syntax for the format command should be. But

mke2fs /dev/<DEVICE>

> I won't be using that anyway now until I create some space for the Linux
> partitions on a "normal" 512 blocksize disk. Unless of course there is a
> Linux command that I can use to do the low level format :-)
> 
> >> 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. 
> 
> Yes the disks were partitioned under AmigaOS using HDToolbox. I do know that
> the Amiga had trouble setting the blocksize to 512, I can set it to 4096 and
> above, but nothing less than 4096. To do this the disks would have to be low
> level formatted with a blocksize of 512. Once a disk has a blocksize of 512,
> the Amiga supports all blocksize from 512 up to 16384 (I think), but the
> low level blocksize is critical. Unfortunately none of the low level format
> commands on the Amiga have succeeded in resetting the block size to 512 :-( 

So probably the Amiga RDB support in Linux doesn't handle 4096-byte blocksizes.

> >   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.
> 
> Will I see this on the text that flashes up when the Penguin appears at the
> top left of the screen and a whole load of white text on a black background
> appears? Trouble is, this stuff looks really interesting, but dissappears

Yes, that's it.

> before I have a chance to read any of it :-( Is there any way I can probe
> again from a shell? 

Use `dmesg | less' or `dmesg | more'.

> I have tried debug=mem, but dmesg or bootmesg never finds anything after a reboot :-(

May not work on APUS, don't know.

> > Linux has its own support for disks, which handles the >4 GB case just
> > fine. Don't know about the Amiga partitioning support, though.
> 
> Does that mean Linux and Amiga partitions shared on a 18Gb disk are a no no? 
> 
> > BTW, since your Compaq is much larger than 4 GB, what does
> > `cat /proc/partitions' say?
> 
> I will try this out andlet you know. 

The partitions look fine (cfr. your other email). So having Linux and Amiga
partitions shared on the 18 GB disk should work fine.

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