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

[Kulwant B. <kul...@bt...>]

Hello Geert, All,

>> Warning: Could not read block 0: Attempt to read block from filesystem
>> resulted in short read.

> Oops...

Not fatal then?

>> Writing inode tables: []1/39
>> 
>> At which point the machine appeared to hang (I left it for several
>> minutes). It would accept a carriage return (I would get a new line) but
>> I didn't get the command prompt (#) back - even after a Ctrl-C. So I
>> rebooted.  

Do you think the machine was doing anything useful when I interrupted it? I
don't think the hard drive activity light was flashing but I'm not 100%
certain. 

Anyway, I have now set-up the Linux partitions on the 420Mb IDE and the installation
program recognises them and they are now initialised and activated. I have
installed the base system on the hda2 root but I could find no command in
the installation menu to "configure the base system". (I am following the
Debian installation instructions from http://abone.turk.net/yurdaerd (they
seemed the most up to date and the author's system is closely matched with
my own). 

I noticed during the initialisation of the IDE partition that the disk light
was on and that the power light level varied (as it does when the audio
filter is being turned on and off or the machine has crashed). Is this normal?
It can be a little unnerving at first.

Does it sound right that I cannot use the menu items for "Install the
OS kernel and Modules". Numerous variations of the instructions from various
places say that this option does not work on PPC Amigas yet and that was my
experience also - however I want to make sure that this is really the case
and that I wasn't doing something wrong. 

The trouble is that after installing the base system, which completed ok,
after a reboot, the linux_start script hangs after the Amiga side filesystems
have been inhibited and before Linux actually boots up. 

My bootstrap line for starting Linux looks like this (the contents of the linux_start script): 

bootstrap --apus -k linux.bin root=/dev/hda2 60nsram nobats video=pm2fb:mode:1024x768-75


The rest of this message is about the scsi problems..

>> Vendor: SEAGATE              Model ST34573LW
>> Type: Direct Access            Rev: 6246        ANSI SCSI Revision 02
>> 
>> SCSI device sda: hdwr sector=512 bytes. Sectors=35566000 [17366MB]
>> [17.4GB] SCSI Device sdb: hdwr sector = 4096 bytes. Sectors = 1271205
>> [4964MB][5.0GB] SCSI Device sdc: hdwr sector = 4096 bytes. Sectors =
>> 1271205 [4964MB][5.0GB] SCSI Device sdd: hdwr sector = 512 bytes.
>> Sectors = 17773524 [8678MB][8.7GB]

> So those disks are recognized correctly as having 4096-byte sectors.

Yes. Strange isn't it. 

>> Partition check: 
>> 
>> sda: RDSK sda1 sda2 sda3 sda4 sda5 sda6 sda7
>> 
>> sdb: sd.cBad block number/count requestedscsidisk I/O error: dev 08:10,
>> sector 0
>> unable to read partition table.

> Either the SCSI disk driver or the RDSK partition code cannot handle
> 4096-byte sectors.

I hope it can be fixed, because otherwise, I will have the hassle of trying
to get them converted somehow. 

> So the driver doesn't seem to handle 4K sectors. Anyone on lkml who has a
> definitive answer about that?

Haven't seen a response yet. 

> I've had them living on one disk for many many years. But I have to admit
> all my disks are < 4 GB.

Saw an email from John Lord who has been using a 10 Gig IDE shared between
Amiga and Linux for 18 months with no ill effects. Sounds promising. 

>> I included the bits about the speeds because on the Amiga side, my
>> drives accept 10MHz synchronous. Why does LINUX manage only 5MHz? Does
>> this get better with a proper installation? 

> I don't know.

Does anyone else? 

Kind regards, 

Kulwant