From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S263740AbTK2JSs (ORCPT ); Sat, 29 Nov 2003 04:18:48 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S263742AbTK2JSr (ORCPT ); Sat, 29 Nov 2003 04:18:47 -0500 Received: from smtp2.wanadoo.fr ([193.252.22.29]:29644 "EHLO mwinf0203.wanadoo.fr") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S263740AbTK2JSp (ORCPT ); Sat, 29 Nov 2003 04:18:45 -0500 Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 10:18:43 +0100 To: Szakacsits Szabolcs Cc: Andrew Clausen , Apurva Mehta , Andries Brouwer , Linux Kernel Mailing List , bug-parted@gnu.org Subject: Re: Disk Geometries reported incorrectly on 2.6.0-testX Message-ID: <20031129091843.GA2430@iliana> References: <20031128045854.GA1353@home.woodlands> <20031128142452.GA4737@win.tue.nl> <20031129022221.GA516@gnu.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.4i From: Sven Luther Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Sat, Nov 29, 2003 at 07:16:31AM +0200, Szakacsits Szabolcs wrote: > > On Sat, 29 Nov 2003, Andrew Clausen wrote: > > On Fri, Nov 28, 2003 at 03:24:52PM +0100, Andries Brouwer wrote: > > > > > > There is no such thing as a "correct" disk geometry. > > > > Yes there is. "Correct" is defined by the BIOS. It is important > > for boot loaders (in particular Windows). > > I suspected the same ... What Windows you mean? DOS (9x/ME/etc) or NT based > (NT4/2000/XP/2003)? All? > > > I'm not sure if this is still a big issue worth worrying about. > > IMHO it might be. At least I'm getting an increasing number of emails from > people who can't boot Windows anymore after resizing and repartitioning > NTFS on Linux. Everybody thinks it's the Linux NTFS code's fault but so far > it was always about the repartitioning going wrong. I just had to write a > FAQ entry about this issue recently > > http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/ntfsresize.html#troubleshoot > > Some users, having problems, did mention the usage of 2.6 kernel. If the > geometry changed during the fdisk, etc process then it could result also > booting problem? It's just a speculation because I've never had enough > information to investigate. > > Also, can Parted save/restore the full and exact partition table a > scriptable way? I mean something like this: > > sfdisk -d /dev/hda > hda.pt # save > sfdisk /dev/hda < hda.pt # restore > > sfdisk can't recover geometry so apparently no one-liner, widely available, > partition table backup/recovery is possible at present on Linux :-o > dd if=/dev/hda of=hda.mbr bs=512 count=1 won't save the logical partitions. Yes, that would be a good idea, it would be even nice to automatically save the partition table the first time parted access the harddisk. The problem is that it needs to be saved on a separate harddisk though, or printed or something such. The partition table saving/restoring would be part of the partition table specific code, so you could know the logical partitions or whatever your precise non-mbr partition table mandates. Friendly, Sven Luther