Re: Total loss with 2.4.0 (release)

Re: Total loss with 2.4.0 (release)

[Trever Adams]

I had a similar experience.  All I can say is windows 98 
and ME seem to have it out for Linux drives running late 
2.3.x and 2.4.0 test and release.  I had windows completely 
fry my Linux drive and I lost everything.  I had some old 
backups and was able to restore at least the majority of 
older stuff.

Sorry and good luck.

> Hi all,
> 
> I managed to kill my dear files and if anyone can help 
I'd be very
> thankful. The events leading to this were something like:
> Happy system with 2.4.0-test9 -> update to 2.4.0 
(release) -> works
> nicely; no complaints of any kind (no crc errors or dma-
disabling) ->
> reboot -> play Diablo II for some time (win98) -> restart 
linux ->
> VFS: cannot mount root. 
> I have two ext2 partitions plus root and one of them is 
on another disk
> (same ide lead, however) and it survived with no errors.
> 
> When I ran e2fsck (1.18) on root partition, in addition 
to having to
> run it many times before succeeding (segfaulted 
sometimes), nothing was
> left in the partition except lost+found with lots of
> files. Valid superblock wasn't found at 0, but at 8193.
> 
> I really don't get what would have caused this or how to 
cure it. I still
> have my /home in need of repairing, but I won't be 
running fsck on it with
> this good expectancy-of-recovery (I actually tried once 
with a backup on
> another disk and it resulted two VERY old directoried, 
everything else was
> lost...and found(?)).
> 
> I also updated my machine from VIA MVP3 based K6II to VIA 
KT133 (with 868B
> southbridge - ATA100, that is) based Duron, but linux 
(2.4.0-test9) worked
> fine with both configurations. I think this might be some 
sort of DMA
> problem.  
> 
> I read from kernel notes that ac1 fixes root umount 
handling. Might that
> be connected with the symptoms I had? If anyone has any 
suggestions,
> please post them. I would, at least, like to know how 
could I verify if
> the filesystem is really messed (for example, overwritten 
with something
> at the bus at the time) or if it's just some minor issue 
that confuses
> fsck totally.
> 
> -- Heikki Lindholm
> 
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Re: Total loss with 2.4.0 (release)

[Mike A. Harris]

On Mon, 15 Jan 2001, Trever Adams wrote:

>I had a similar experience.  All I can say is windows 98
>and ME seem to have it out for Linux drives running late
>2.3.x and 2.4.0 test and release.  I had windows completely
>fry my Linux drive and I lost everything.  I had some old
>backups and was able to restore at least the majority of
>older stuff.
>
>Sorry and good luck.

I don't see how Windows 9x can be at fault in any way shape or
form, if you can boot between 2.2.x kernel and 9x no problem, but
lose your disk if you boot Win98 and then 2.3.x/2.4.x and lose
everything.  Windows does not touch your Linux fs's, so if there
is a problem, it most likely is a kernel bug of some kind that
doesn't initialize something properly.

Windows sucks, and I hate it as much (probably more) than the
next guy.  It's not fair to blame every computer problem on it
though unless you KNOW that Windows directly caused the problem.

Pick one of the 1000000000 good reasons to say Windows sucks
instead...

For what it is worth, I have a similar problem where if I boot
Windows (to show people what "multicrashing" is), if I boot back
into Linux, my network card no longer works (via-rhine).  Most
definitely a Linux bug.  In this case, "via-rhine.o" sucks.

;o)


----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Mike A. Harris  -  Linux advocate  -  Free Software advocate
          This message is copyright 2001, all rights reserved.
  Views expressed are my own, not necessarily shared by my employer.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I'd offer to change your mind for you, but I don't have a fresh diaper.
  -- Leah to pro-spammer in news.admin.net-abuse.email

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Re: Total loss with 2.4.0 (release)

[Alan Olsen]

On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, Mike A. Harris wrote:

> On Mon, 15 Jan 2001, Trever Adams wrote:
> 
> >I had a similar experience.  All I can say is windows 98
> >and ME seem to have it out for Linux drives running late
> >2.3.x and 2.4.0 test and release.  I had windows completely
> >fry my Linux drive and I lost everything.  I had some old
> >backups and was able to restore at least the majority of
> >older stuff.
> >
> >Sorry and good luck.
> 
> I don't see how Windows 9x can be at fault in any way shape or
> form, if you can boot between 2.2.x kernel and 9x no problem, but
> lose your disk if you boot Win98 and then 2.3.x/2.4.x and lose
> everything.  Windows does not touch your Linux fs's, so if there
> is a problem, it most likely is a kernel bug of some kind that
> doesn't initialize something properly.

I am seeing weird reporting of size problems on a VFAT partition.

It has not corrupted anything, but a "df" shows the size to be a large
negative number.  (It worked when the drive had about 22 gigs full on the
30 gig partition, but went wonky when I deleted everything on that
partition.)

Drive is a Western Digital 307AA 30.7 gb drive.

Kernel is 2.4.0 on a P-III 650.

Partition is type "c" (Win95 FAT32 (LBA)).  Partition starts at 1 and ends
on 3739. 30033486 blocks.

/dev/hdb1    30018800 -295147905179350204416  32652912  9% /export1

df version is from fileutils-4.0.  (Mandrake package fileutils-4.0-13mdk,
which is current.)

du reports the correct amount of space used.  I can read the drive, but
the drive size reported is not correct.  Not certain if this is a problem
in 2.4.0, df, or something else. Have never seen this problem before.
(And I mount vfat partitions frequently.)  

I have not seen any file corruption on this or the other Linux partition
that stays in the drive the few and far between times I run Win 98.
(Carmageddon 3 does not run under Linux yet...)

alan@ctrl-alt-del.com | Note to AOL users: for a quick shortcut to reply
Alan Olsen            | to my mail, just hit the ctrl, alt and del keys.
    "In the future, everything will have its 15 minutes of blame."

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Re: Total loss with 2.4.0 (release)

[Trever L. Adams]

Mike A. Harris wrote:

> On Mon, 15 Jan 2001, Trever Adams wrote:
> 
> I don't see how Windows 9x can be at fault in any way shape or
> form, if you can boot between 2.2.x kernel and 9x no problem, but
> lose your disk if you boot Win98 and then 2.3.x/2.4.x and lose
> everything.  Windows does not touch your Linux fs's, so if there
> is a problem, it most likely is a kernel bug of some kind that
> doesn't initialize something properly.

Well, I boot into Linux, all is fine, rebooted into a different version 
of Linux for some testing, all is fine (this was an older version, I 
believe it was 2.2.14 or .15)  Try to install ME and run it, seems ok. 
Go back to Linux, and my drive was fried with Windows files all over it, 
etc.

I know Windows shouldn't touch a Linux partition.  But, apparently it 
did.  Or else Linux and/or Fdisk are fried and made a bad partition table.

> Windows sucks, and I hate it as much (probably more) than the
> next guy.  It's not fair to blame every computer problem on it
> though unless you KNOW that Windows directly caused the problem.

I said what I did, because it seems the evidence said Windows did do it. 
  If it didn't, oops.  I have talked with others and they had a similar 
experience, so I am not alone.

> Pick one of the 1000000000 good reasons to say Windows sucks
> instead...
> 
> For what it is worth, I have a similar problem where if I boot
> Windows (to show people what "multicrashing" is), if I boot back
> into Linux, my network card no longer works (via-rhine).  Most
> definitely a Linux bug.  In this case, "via-rhine.o" sucks.
> 
> ;o)

Well, this is actually the second time I have had Windows write all over 
my Linux partition.  The first time I think it was not a bug in either, 
but a bug in hardware.  However, I no longer have that hardware as my 
desktop.

Trever

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Re: Total loss with 2.4.0 (release)

[Patrizio Bruno]

I think that your linux's partition has not been overwritten, but only the MBR
of your disk, so you probably just need to reinstall lilo. Insert your
installation bootdisk into your pc, then skip all the setup stuff, but the
choose of the partition where you want to install and the source from where
you want to install, then select just the lilo configuration (bootconfiguration
I mean), complete that step and reboot your machine, lilo will'be there again.

P.

On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, Trever L. Adams wrote:

> Mike A. Harris wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 15 Jan 2001, Trever Adams wrote:
> > 
> > I don't see how Windows 9x can be at fault in any way shape or
> > form, if you can boot between 2.2.x kernel and 9x no problem, but
> > lose your disk if you boot Win98 and then 2.3.x/2.4.x and lose
> > everything.  Windows does not touch your Linux fs's, so if there
> > is a problem, it most likely is a kernel bug of some kind that
> > doesn't initialize something properly.
> 
> Well, I boot into Linux, all is fine, rebooted into a different version 
> of Linux for some testing, all is fine (this was an older version, I 
> believe it was 2.2.14 or .15)  Try to install ME and run it, seems ok. 
> Go back to Linux, and my drive was fried with Windows files all over it, 
> etc.
> 
> I know Windows shouldn't touch a Linux partition.  But, apparently it 
> did.  Or else Linux and/or Fdisk are fried and made a bad partition table.
> 
> > Windows sucks, and I hate it as much (probably more) than the
> > next guy.  It's not fair to blame every computer problem on it
> > though unless you KNOW that Windows directly caused the problem.
> 
> I said what I did, because it seems the evidence said Windows did do it. 
>   If it didn't, oops.  I have talked with others and they had a similar 
> experience, so I am not alone.
> 
> > Pick one of the 1000000000 good reasons to say Windows sucks
> > instead...
> > 
> > For what it is worth, I have a similar problem where if I boot
> > Windows (to show people what "multicrashing" is), if I boot back
> > into Linux, my network card no longer works (via-rhine).  Most
> > definitely a Linux bug.  In this case, "via-rhine.o" sucks.
> > 
> > ;o)
> 
> Well, this is actually the second time I have had Windows write all over 
> my Linux partition.  The first time I think it was not a bug in either, 
> but a bug in hardware.  However, I no longer have that hardware as my 
> desktop.
> 
> Trever
> 
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---------------------------------------------------------
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DADA spa / Ed-IT Development Staff
Borgo degli Albizi 37/r
50122 Firenze
Italy
tel +39 05520351
fax +39 0552478143

PGP PublicKey available at: http://www.keyserver.net/en/
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Re: Total loss with 2.4.0 (release)

[Trever L. Adams]

Patrizio Bruno wrote:

> I think that your linux's partition has not been overwritten, but only the MBR
> of your disk, so you probably just need to reinstall lilo. Insert your
> installation bootdisk into your pc, then skip all the setup stuff, but the
> choose of the partition where you want to install and the source from where
> you want to install, then select just the lilo configuration (bootconfiguration
> I mean), complete that step and reboot your machine, lilo will'be there again.
> 
> P.
> 
> On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, Trever L. Adams wrote:

I hate to tell you this, but you couldn't be more wrong.  My MBR was 
fine.  Lilo was fine and ran fine.  The kernel even booted. The problem 
was my ext2 partition was scrambled but good (over 4 hours trying to fix 
it and answer all the questions that fsck threw out).  The ext2 drive 
lost a lot of data and suddenly had windows stuff all over it (yes, just 
like Mike, I had ttf fonts and other such things).

Trever

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Re: Total loss with 2.4.0 (release)

[Richard B. Johnson]

On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, Trever L. Adams wrote:

> Patrizio Bruno wrote:
> 
> > I think that your linux's partition has not been overwritten, but only the MBR
> > of your disk, so you probably just need to reinstall lilo. Insert your
> > installation bootdisk into your pc, then skip all the setup stuff, but the
> > choose of the partition where you want to install and the source from where
> > you want to install, then select just the lilo configuration (bootconfiguration
> > I mean), complete that step and reboot your machine, lilo will'be there again.
> > 
> > P.
> > 
> > On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, Trever L. Adams wrote:
> 
> I hate to tell you this, but you couldn't be more wrong.  My MBR was 
> fine.  Lilo was fine and ran fine.  The kernel even booted. The problem 
> was my ext2 partition was scrambled but good (over 4 hours trying to fix 
> it and answer all the questions that fsck threw out).  The ext2 drive 
> lost a lot of data and suddenly had windows stuff all over it (yes, just 
> like Mike, I had ttf fonts and other such things).
> 
> Trever
> 

Yes, last week I had a similar problem with the 2.4.0 (release) version.
I use only SCSI (Buslogic on this machine). The root file-system
was overwritten with a repeated directory-name+junk. This was reported
to the linux-kernel list. This problem occurred during my automated
nightly tape backup. Since the backup operation is mostly a read
operation, I suggested that the corruption occurred while updating
ATIME.

The file system was not recoverable. I keep a week's worth of tapes
before they get overwritten so I only lost a day's work and I really
didn't do much on that day so I really lost nothing but my temper ;^;).

Nobody seems to have discovered the problem yet. It is likely some
race produced by those who have been working on finer-ganularity
locking.

I'm still using the same kernel, although my 'tar' script now
does --atime-preserve. I don't know if this really works as
expected though...


Cheers,
Dick Johnson

Penguin : Linux version 2.4.0 on an i686 machine (799.53 BogoMips).

"Memory is like gasoline. You use it up when you are running. Of
course you get it all back when you reboot..."; Actual explanation
obtained from the Micro$oft help desk.


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Re: Total loss with 2.4.0 (release)

[Mark I Manning IV]

> >
> > > I think that your linux's partition has not been overwritten, but only the MBR
> > > of your disk, so you probably just need to reinstall lilo. Insert your
> > > installation bootdisk into your pc, then skip all the setup stuff, but the
> > > choose of the partition where you want to install and the source from where
> > > you want to install, then select just the lilo configuration (bootconfiguration
> > > I mean), complete that step and reboot your machine, lilo will'be there again.

Oopts I did this last week (fdisk /mbr doesnt do lilo any good :P)

Insert Debian boot cd, boot to install, press Alt f2  Create mountpoint,
Mount /dev/hda1, CD to that directory chroot to it, cd into /root and
./.profile (prolly not needed but can be useful sometimes)  run lilo. 
All fixed (except by the time i rebooted my motherboard had commited
suicide on me for being so stupid.  Im about to go collect the
replacement right now :)


> > I hate to tell you this, but you couldn't be more wrong.  My MBR was
> > fine.  Lilo was fine and ran fine.  The kernel even booted. The problem
> > was my ext2 partition was scrambled but good (over 4 hours trying to fix
> > it and answer all the questions that fsck threw out).  The ext2 drive
> > lost a lot of data and suddenly had windows stuff all over it (yes, just
> > like Mike, I had ttf fonts and other such things).


Argh... Window$, ya gotta love it!

 
> Nobody seems to have discovered the problem yet. It is likely some
> race produced by those who have been working on finer-ganularity
> locking.

If i boot my laptop to windows I have to do a total shutdown befire
booting back into windows or else gpm goes all crazy.  It occurs to me
that maybe OTHER things are going crazy too but are just not doing it as
loudly :)

I think it would be a good polacy to NOT boot from windows immediatly
into Linux without a shutdownn in between (a pain in the ass for sure :)

> "Memory is like gasoline. You use it up when you are running. Of
> course you get it all back when you reboot..."; Actual explanation
> obtained from the Micro$oft help desk.

:)
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Re: Total loss with 2.4.0 (release)

[Ben Ford]

Mark I Manning IV wrote:

> > >
> > > > I think that your linux's partition has not been overwritten, but only the MBR
> > > > of your disk, so you probably just need to reinstall lilo. Insert your
> > > > installation bootdisk into your pc, then skip all the setup stuff, but the
> > > > choose of the partition where you want to install and the source from where
> > > > you want to install, then select just the lilo configuration (bootconfiguration
> > > > I mean), complete that step and reboot your machine, lilo will'be there again.
>
> Oopts I did this last week (fdisk /mbr doesnt do lilo any good :P)
>
> Insert Debian boot cd, boot to install, press Alt f2  Create mountpoint,
> Mount /dev/hda1, CD to that directory chroot to it, cd into /root and
> ./.profile (prolly not needed but can be useful sometimes)  run lilo.
> All fixed (except by the time i rebooted my motherboard had commited
> suicide on me for being so stupid.  Im about to go collect the
> replacement right now :)

Holy cow.  Try this.

1.  Boot from Slackware CD
2.  At boot prompt enter:   vmlinuz root=/dev/hda3 (replace with correct device of
course)
3.  Boot.
4.  Run lilo.
5.  Reboot if you want to.

-b


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Re: Total loss with 2.4.0 (release)

[Mike A. Harris]

On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, Trever L. Adams wrote:

>> I think that your linux's partition has not been overwritten, but only the MBR
>> of your disk, so you probably just need to reinstall lilo. Insert your
>> installation bootdisk into your pc, then skip all the setup stuff, but the
>> choose of the partition where you want to install and the source from where
>> you want to install, then select just the lilo configuration (bootconfiguration
>> I mean), complete that step and reboot your machine, lilo will'be there again.
>>
>> P.
>>
>> On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, Trever L. Adams wrote:
>
>I hate to tell you this, but you couldn't be more wrong.  My MBR was
>fine.  Lilo was fine and ran fine.  The kernel even booted. The problem
>was my ext2 partition was scrambled but good (over 4 hours trying to fix
>it and answer all the questions that fsck threw out).  The ext2 drive
>lost a lot of data and suddenly had windows stuff all over it (yes, just
>like Mike, I had ttf fonts and other such things).

Lets get a few points clear..  Are we talking - you already had
both linux and WinXX installed, and rebooted from Linux into the
existing Windows setup, and next time you booted Windows Linux
was fried?

Sounds like you might have a partitioning problem where Windows
sees the disk geometry one way, and perhaps Linux sees it
differently.

I can't see at all how Windows could end up putting data on ext2
volumes though without read-write ext2 support in Windows.  Are
you running the freely available ext2 fs driver in Windows?




----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Mike A. Harris  -  Linux advocate  -  Free Software advocate
          This message is copyright 2001, all rights reserved.
  Views expressed are my own, not necessarily shared by my employer.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that,
lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination
of their C programs.
  -- Robert Firth

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Re: Total loss with 2.4.0 (release)

[Mike A. Harris]

On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, Trever L. Adams wrote:

>> I don't see how Windows 9x can be at fault in any way shape or
>> form, if you can boot between 2.2.x kernel and 9x no problem, but
>> lose your disk if you boot Win98 and then 2.3.x/2.4.x and lose
>> everything.  Windows does not touch your Linux fs's, so if there
>> is a problem, it most likely is a kernel bug of some kind that
>> doesn't initialize something properly.
>
>Well, I boot into Linux, all is fine, rebooted into a different version
>of Linux for some testing, all is fine (this was an older version, I
>believe it was 2.2.14 or .15)  Try to install ME and run it, seems ok.
>Go back to Linux, and my drive was fried with Windows files all over it,
>etc.

Ahh.  Now _that_ is different.  ;o)  In this case, yes Windows
sucks.  I retract my comment entirely.  ;o)  At least I was
trying to be fair and unbiased, (despite being very biased
in favor of Linux by a factor of about 10^99999999999). ;op


>I know Windows shouldn't touch a Linux partition.  But, apparently it
>did.  Or else Linux and/or Fdisk are fried and made a bad partition table.

Whwnever you install/upgrade any OS and especially M$ ones on a
multiboot machine, you should always ensure ahead of time that
they will play nicely together, agree on geometry translation
schemes, partitioning schemes, etc, and that any option to take
over the whole machine is turned off.  Windows NT defaults to
"fry the whole disk", but I don't know about ME or W2K as they
are IMHO just bloat + new pictures, etc..

I know if you have a 8G drive or larger, and install NT4 on it it
will fry everything entirely unless you stand on your head and
read about 50 MS kb articles.  Thankfully, I will _never_ have to
encounter this sort of thing again though.  ;o)


>> Windows sucks, and I hate it as much (probably more) than the
>> next guy.  It's not fair to blame every computer problem on it
>> though unless you KNOW that Windows directly caused the problem.
>
>I said what I did, because it seems the evidence said Windows did do it.
>If it didn't, oops.  I have talked with others and they had a similar
>experience, so I am not alone.

Right, sounds like you are correct.  I thought you had Windows
installed already, and were merely booting between the two and
then lost everything.  That is an unlikely scenario to occur
though..  Installing WinXY is a different story though.  ;o)


>> Pick one of the 1000000000 good reasons to say Windows sucks
>> instead...
>>
>> For what it is worth, I have a similar problem where if I boot
>> Windows (to show people what "multicrashing" is), if I boot back
>> into Linux, my network card no longer works (via-rhine).  Most
>> definitely a Linux bug.  In this case, "via-rhine.o" sucks.
>>
>> ;o)
>
>Well, this is actually the second time I have had Windows write all over
>my Linux partition.  The first time I think it was not a bug in either,
>but a bug in hardware.  However, I no longer have that hardware as my
>desktop.

If it occurs frequently, I would double or triple check the BIOS
configuration of your drives, as well as the way that Linux sees
them.  Such a problem should be quite rare if it is all set up
right - barring viruses, trojans, and script kiddies.

Is it possible that the kernel you're using is messed up, and
doesn't umount the disks properly?  Perhaps some silent disk
corruption issue?  Does fdisk show only a single partition the
size of your whole disk, or are Linux partitions still in
existance.  I would wager that if linux partitions show up in the
partition table, that there is a good chance Windows didn't screw
it up.  I won't bank on that though, as Windows can certainly
foob things in many ways.  ;o)

Good luck.

TTYL

----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Mike A. Harris  -  Linux advocate  -  Free Software advocate
          This message is copyright 2001, all rights reserved.
  Views expressed are my own, not necessarily shared by my employer.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."
                                               - Aldous Huxley

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Re: Total loss with 2.4.0 (release)

[Kjartan Maraas]

Den 23 Jan 2001 13:28:38 -0500, skrev Mike A. Harris:
> 
> 
> Whwnever you install/upgrade any OS and especially M$ ones on a
> multiboot machine, you should always ensure ahead of time that
> they will play nicely together, agree on geometry translation
> schemes, partitioning schemes, etc, and that any option to take
> over the whole machine is turned off.  Windows NT defaults to
> "fry the whole disk", but I don't know about ME or W2K as they
> are IMHO just bloat + new pictures, etc..
> 
> I know if you have a 8G drive or larger, and install NT4 on it it
> will fry everything entirely unless you stand on your head and
> read about 50 MS kb articles.  Thankfully, I will _never_ have to
> encounter this sort of thing again though.  ;o)
> 
I'm sitting here doing an install of NT4 on a box with a 10 gig

drive containing three partitions (two W2K and one ext2). The nice NT4
install asked me nicely which partition I wanted to install on:
NTFS      4GB
Unknown 1 GB (ext2)
NTFS      5GB

This doesn't look like "default to fry everything" to me. It's nicer if
we stick to the facts...

Cheers
Kjartan Maraas


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Re: Total loss with 2.4.0 (release)

[Mike A. Harris]

On 25 Jan 2001, Kjartan Maraas wrote:

>> Whwnever you install/upgrade any OS and especially M$ ones on a
>> multiboot machine, you should always ensure ahead of time that
>> they will play nicely together, agree on geometry translation
>> schemes, partitioning schemes, etc, and that any option to take
>> over the whole machine is turned off.  Windows NT defaults to
>> "fry the whole disk", but I don't know about ME or W2K as they
>> are IMHO just bloat + new pictures, etc..
>>
>> I know if you have a 8G drive or larger, and install NT4 on it it
>> will fry everything entirely unless you stand on your head and
>> read about 50 MS kb articles.  Thankfully, I will _never_ have to
>> encounter this sort of thing again though.  ;o)
>>
>I'm sitting here doing an install of NT4 on a box with a 10 gig
>
>drive containing three partitions (two W2K and one ext2). The nice NT4
>install asked me nicely which partition I wanted to install on:
>NTFS      4GB
>Unknown 1 GB (ext2)
>NTFS      5GB
>
>This doesn't look like "default to fry everything" to me. It's nicer if
>we stick to the facts...

Yes, lets do that.  Lets stick to some facts:

1) One single person (you) not having a problem does not mean in
   any way that this is the way it occurs for 100% of the
   userbase.  There are way too many different computer systems
   in use today, with varying hardware problems, software
   problems, etc.  Making a carte blanche statement which more or
   less says "it works for me so you don't know what you're
   talking about" is arrogant and does not help anyone.

2) I've installed systems like this a LOT and _have_ had problems
   with NT4 on ALL of them that had disks larger than 8G.

3) The solution to the problems I (and numerous others have had)
   for these NT related problems are acknowledged problems with
   Microsuck NT, and are dealt with by Microsoft Knowledgebase
   articles.

These knowledgebase articles point out many problems NT has with
large disks both during install time as well as after install
time, numerous problems NT has with partition sizes and
locations, especially on large IDE hard disks.

Due to these problems, if you do not follow exact procedures
carefully, and have an OS installed on such a disk, you can and
most likely _will_ fry all OS's and data when installing Windows
NT4 (both WS and SRV).

Actually, just so we're being "factual" here, and so this thread
doesn't go on to the "oh yeah? lets see page numbers then" stage,
I will spend the 10 minutes to cut this thread dead right now for
everyone.

For your viewing pleasure - the "facts":

Afticle Q114841: Windows NT Boot Process and Hard Disk Constraints
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q114/8/41.ASP

Article Q119497: Boot Partition Created During Setup Limited to 4 Gigabytes
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q119/4/97.ASP

Article Q197667: Installing Windows NT on a Large IDE Hard Disk
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q197/6/67.ASP

Article Q224526: Windows NT 4.0 Supports Maximum of 7.8-GB System Partition
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q224/5/26.ASP

Fortunately I still had the above links bookmarked so it was
painless nor time consuming to educate you.

Are there any other facts that you'd like to discuss?
Preferably not ones about Microsoft... I hate their damned
website.  Doesn't work with Mozilla either...  (custom build of
a CVS snapshot before you try to say "mozilla works for me on
their site")...






----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Mike A. Harris  -  Linux advocate  -  Free Software advocate
          This message is copyright 2001, all rights reserved.
  Views expressed are my own, not necessarily shared by my employer.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
If you're interested in computer security, and want to stay on top of the
latest security exploits, and other information, visit:

http://www.securityfocus.com

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Re: Total loss with 2.4.0 (release)

[Peter 'Luna' Runestig]

From: "Mike A. Harris" <mharris@opensourceadvocate.org>:
> >> Whwnever you install/upgrade any OS and especially M$ ones on a
> >> multiboot machine, you should always ensure ahead of time that
> >> they will play nicely together, agree on geometry translation
> >> schemes, partitioning schemes, etc, and that any option to take
> >> over the whole machine is turned off.  Windows NT defaults to
> >> "fry the whole disk", but I don't know about ME or W2K as they
> >> are IMHO just bloat + new pictures, etc..

In what situation would NT4 default to "fry the whole disk"? I've mixed
Linux/DOS/Win98/NT4/Win2000 several ways on various hardware (>8 GB disks),
with no problems at all actually. Maybe "one single person having a problem
does not mean in any way that this is the way it occurs for 100% of the
userbase" ?

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PGP Key ID: 0xD07BBE13
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Re: Total loss with 2.4.0 (release)

[Mark van Walraven]

On Sat, Jan 27, 2001 at 12:12:53AM +0100, Peter 'Luna' Runestig wrote:
> In what situation would NT4 default to "fry the whole disk"? I've mixed
> Linux/DOS/Win98/NT4/Win2000 several ways on various hardware (>8 GB disks),
> with no problems at all actually.

I've had Windows suddenly using the 'begin' and 'end' (CHS) fields in
the partition table entry for a FAT32 partition when it should have been
using 'start' and 'length' (LBA) fields.  The result was that everything
on the FAT32 partition disappeared (according to Windows) and a couple
of block groups in an ext2 partition were clobbered.

Another time, I found what looked like bits of the page file in the
middle of a wrong partition when swapping onto the second disk.

Two associates have had ext2 partitions partially overwritten by
re-installing Win98.

>                                   Maybe "one single person having a problem
> does not mean in any way that this is the way it occurs for 100% of the
> userbase" ?

All the problems in the thread smell like geometry problems to me.  I
never experienced one myself until I got an evil combination of disk,
BIOS and filesystem.  Then, ZAP!

Regards,

Mark.
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Re: Total loss with 2.4.0 (release)

[Heikki Lindholm]

On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, Mike A. Harris wrote:

> On Mon, 15 Jan 2001, Trever Adams wrote:
> 
> >I had a similar experience.  All I can say is windows 98
> >and ME seem to have it out for Linux drives running late
> >2.3.x and 2.4.0 test and release.  I had windows completely
> >fry my Linux drive and I lost everything.  I had some old
> >backups and was able to restore at least the majority of
> >older stuff.
> >
> >Sorry and good luck.
> 
> I don't see how Windows 9x can be at fault in any way shape or
> form, if you can boot between 2.2.x kernel and 9x no problem, but
> lose your disk if you boot Win98 and then 2.3.x/2.4.x and lose
> everything.  Windows does not touch your Linux fs's, so if there
> is a problem, it most likely is a kernel bug of some kind that
> doesn't initialize something properly.

I was the original complainer - and came to the same conclusion: that
windows wiped my stuff. I gathered it up from:

A. After booting to windows and back to 2.4.0 all was lost and the kernel
   couldn't even mount / and didn't even try /home, which was wiped, too
   (used 2.2 debian boot disks to verify that, at the time).
B. I rebuilt everything and am using 2.4.0 kernel now without any serious
   flaws (using VIA 868B UDMA33). And I'm definitely not trying to win 98
   again..
C. the wiped partition had TrueType(tm) fonts in lost+found. I can't
   think of any other reason for that except that they're from windows'
   swapping process.
...
Z. Windows 98 generally doesn't have very good architecture concerning
   drivers. It looks nice, but is a mess underneath (proved numerous times
   by trying to upgrade an old windows installation to a new machine).

-- hl


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Re: Total loss with 2.4.0 (release)

[Ragnar Hojland Espinosa]

On Tue, Jan 23, 2001 at 12:33:45AM -0500, Mike A. Harris wrote:
> On Mon, 15 Jan 2001, Trever Adams wrote:
> 
> >I had a similar experience.  All I can say is windows 98
> >and ME seem to have it out for Linux drives running late
> >2.3.x and 2.4.0 test and release.  I had windows completely
> >fry my Linux drive and I lost everything.  I had some old
> 
> I don't see how Windows 9x can be at fault in any way shape or
> form, if you can boot between 2.2.x kernel and 9x no problem, but
> lose your disk if you boot Win98 and then 2.3.x/2.4.x and lose
> everything.  Windows does not touch your Linux fs's, so if there

WS Windows might reprogram IDE / drives in some way that, being left in that
state, conflict with linux's. .. well, ask Andre, he'll know :)

-- 
____/|  Ragnar Højland     Freedom - Linux - OpenGL      Fingerprint  94C4B
\ o.O|                                                   2F0D27DE025BE2302C
 =(_)=  "Thou shalt not follow the NULL pointer for      104B78C56 B72F0822
   U     chaos and madness await thee at its end."
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Re: Total loss with 2.4.0 (release) (win98 not honoring partitioning)

[Jason Venner]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1986 bytes --]


Windows 98 and possibly followons doesn't quite honor 'b' type
partitions in the extended area of the disk, particularily if you are
past the 8gig boundary and the partitions in question are over 2gig.
The above numbers are NOT hard boundaries, I have only seen this on 2
computers and those numbers are approximate.

Generally, I have to use partition magic to make partitions past that
point if I don't want windows to scribble all over my other
partitions.

This is quite a nightmare, and not all that easy to diagnose or fix.


> On Tue, Jan 23, 2001 at 12:33:45AM -0500, Mike A. Harris wrote:
> > On Mon, 15 Jan 2001, Trever Adams wrote:
> > 
> > >I had a similar experience.  All I can say is windows 98
> > >and ME seem to have it out for Linux drives running late
> > >2.3.x and 2.4.0 test and release.  I had windows completely
> > >fry my Linux drive and I lost everything.  I had some old
> > 
> > I don't see how Windows 9x can be at fault in any way shape or
> > form, if you can boot between 2.2.x kernel and 9x no problem, but
> > lose your disk if you boot Win98 and then 2.3.x/2.4.x and lose
> > everything.  Windows does not touch your Linux fs's, so if there
> 
> WS Windows might reprogram IDE / drives in some way that, being left in that
> state, conflict with linux's. .. well, ask Andre, he'll know :)
> 
> -- 
> ____/|  Ragnar Højland     Freedom - Linux - OpenGL      Fingerprint  94C4B
> \ o.O|                                                   2F0D27DE025BE2302C
>  =(_)=  "Thou shalt not follow the NULL pointer for      104B78C56 B72F0822
>    U     chaos and madness await thee at its end."
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
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> 
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Re: Total loss with 2.4.0 (release) (win98 not honoring partitioning)

[J Sloan]

Jason Venner wrote:

> Windows 98 and possibly followons doesn't quite honor 'b' type
> partitions in the extended area of the disk, particularily if you are
> past the 8gig boundary and the partitions in question are over 2gig.
> The above numbers are NOT hard boundaries, I have only seen this on 2
> computers and those numbers are approximate.

This should be an FAQ - running windows on a system
where you have a Linux partition is dangerous, and you
run the risk of losing all your data. Any Linux system that
contains important data should NOT dual boot with windows.

The voice of experience talking...

jjs

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Re: Total loss with 2.4.0 (release)

[Mike A. Harris]

On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, Ragnar Hojland Espinosa wrote:

>> >I had a similar experience.  All I can say is windows 98
>> >and ME seem to have it out for Linux drives running late
>> >2.3.x and 2.4.0 test and release.  I had windows completely
>> >fry my Linux drive and I lost everything.  I had some old
>>
>> I don't see how Windows 9x can be at fault in any way shape or
>> form, if you can boot between 2.2.x kernel and 9x no problem, but
>> lose your disk if you boot Win98 and then 2.3.x/2.4.x and lose
>> everything.  Windows does not touch your Linux fs's, so if there
>
>WS Windows might reprogram IDE / drives in some way that, being left in that
>state, conflict with linux's. .. well, ask Andre, he'll know :)

I certainly wouldn't say it is impossible.  ;o)  Definitely
anything is possible in machines today, especially where chips do
not match chip specs, and OS's do not follow either.  ;o)


----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Mike A. Harris  -  Linux advocate  -  Free Software advocate
          This message is copyright 2001, all rights reserved.
  Views expressed are my own, not necessarily shared by my employer.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and BSD.
We don't believe this to be a coincidence.
   -- Jeremy S. Anderson

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Total loss with 2.4.0 (release)

[Heikki Lindholm]

Hi all,

I managed to kill my dear files and if anyone can help I'd be very
thankful. The events leading to this were something like:
Happy system with 2.4.0-test9 -> update to 2.4.0 (release) -> works
nicely; no complaints of any kind (no crc errors or dma-disabling) ->
reboot -> play Diablo II for some time (win98) -> restart linux ->
VFS: cannot mount root. 
I have two ext2 partitions plus root and one of them is on another disk
(same ide lead, however) and it survived with no errors.

When I ran e2fsck (1.18) on root partition, in addition to having to
run it many times before succeeding (segfaulted sometimes), nothing was
left in the partition except lost+found with lots of
files. Valid superblock wasn't found at 0, but at 8193.

I really don't get what would have caused this or how to cure it. I still
have my /home in need of repairing, but I won't be running fsck on it with
this good expectancy-of-recovery (I actually tried once with a backup on
another disk and it resulted two VERY old directoried, everything else was
lost...and found(?)).

I also updated my machine from VIA MVP3 based K6II to VIA KT133 (with 868B
southbridge - ATA100, that is) based Duron, but linux (2.4.0-test9) worked
fine with both configurations. I think this might be some sort of DMA
problem.  

I read from kernel notes that ac1 fixes root umount handling. Might that
be connected with the symptoms I had? If anyone has any suggestions,
please post them. I would, at least, like to know how could I verify if
the filesystem is really messed (for example, overwritten with something
at the bus at the time) or if it's just some minor issue that confuses
fsck totally.

-- Heikki Lindholm

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