[vox-tech] Newbie: On building a Linux box

[Jeff Newmiller]

On Wed, 18 Sep 2002, B Raiford wrote:

> 
> For those of you who answered my call for help: Thank you!
[...]
>     Disk: 0 (Pri Master)
>       Type:  ATA/IDE   Size:  41.1GB Model: IBM Deskstar DTLA-305040
>         16383 Cylinders/ 16 Heads/ 63 Sectors

This CHS setting is a magic combination that means CHS is
meaningless... the disk is too large. See the Linux Large-Hard-Disk-Howto.

>       Partition:    Size    File Type   Used for:
>         hda1        24MB    ext3        Red Hat
>         hda2      8001MB    ext3          "
>         hda3      1020MB    linux-swap    "
>         hda4     30216MB    Extended
>           hda5      24MB    ext2        SuSE
>           hda6     133MB    linux-swap    "
>           hda7   30059MB    ext2          "
>     Disk: 1 (Pri Slave)
>     Disk: 2 (Secondary Master)
>       None
>     Disk: 3 (Secondary Slave)
>       CD-ROM: IDE/ATAPI Mfg: Mitsumi Model: FX240S (CRMC240S)
[...]
> Then there is the 6.4GB hard disk:
> Maxtor 86480D8
> CHS: 13392/15/63
> Jumpers set for Master w/slave; Maxtor does not show that jumper
> configuration on their web site any more.

??? http://www.maxtor.com/en/documentation/quick_start_cards/desktop_quick_start_ata.pdf

> I was using it on a DOS machine with 3 partitions of 2GB each.
> I don't remember why, but I installed Maxtor's ez drive. I think I was
> having trouble getting it to work with fdisk partitions.

DOS didn't like large disks.  See the Large Drive Howto.  BIOS kludges,
jumpering kludges, and boot sector kludges have been tried to get around
that, leaving a mess for us to wade through now.

> I tried a couple years ago to use it for Windows 2000, but it would not
> recognize more than the first 2GB, even though fdisk would partition almost
> all of the 6.4GB. Now I have the same problem with trying to put Red Hat on
> it. I will probably try to use it again once I am a little more comfortable
> with Linux (you may not have noticed, but I don't know much about Linux).

Some BIOSes have capacity limiting options, and the hard disk has a jumper
for that too.  However, I would suspect the BIOS because you say fdisk
seems happy to access the whole disk.  None of this is specific to Linux,
though.

[...]

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