Re: 1.Thanks, 2.Bug(?)

[Wlodek Drabent]

Hello

It seems that my disk could be an interesting case to you.  But now
partitioning is done, and the disk is back in work, I am hurrying up
to "repair" my delays due to time spent at repartitioning :)  So I
cannot do any risky things with the disk.

And of course when one has troubles one is not careful enough to make
detailed notes :)

>  > 2. Parted says:
>  > ................
>  > Warning: Unable to align partition properly.  This probably means that 
> another
>  > partitioning tool generated an incorrect partition table, because it 
> didn't have
>  > the correct BIOS geometry.  It is safe to ignore,but ignoring may cause
>  > (fixable) problems with some boot loaders.
>  > Ignore Cancel ? 

>  I find this all really hard to believe... the same
>  function that is failing ("unable to align")  was the
>  function that aligned the partition in the first place.
>  (this is equivalent to saying 1 != 1)

It seems to me that the message was there every time parted started.
At least it was there often.  (And I made several tries).
Each time I answered Ignore and parted worked.

>  Perhaps your commercial program screwed it up?
>  I'm confused.

>  > 3. /proc/ide/hda/geometry   is
>  >     physical     7944/16/63
>  >     logical      993/128/63

>  This is very strange.

According to my old fdisk printout, it has always been 993/128/63,
since I got the computer (with NT and redhat linux).

NT program   INSPECT - Version PC10.27A   says 992 128 63, which
seems to be the same.

The setup of the computer says 7942 (!) cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors/track.

The last things I have done with the disk were:

- Making partition 6 smaller (with parted I suppose) , to get out of
overlapping.
- Enlarging partition 6 (with partition magic?) to use all the space.
- Enlarging partition 8 with partition magic to include the last cylinder.
For the last step I made some unsuccessful attempts with p.m. and
parted until I found that that p.m. needs the partition to have a label.

Some details about the current state of the disk follow.  Maybe they
may be of some use for you.

best regards
--W.
................
                                  cfdisk 2.9w

                              Disk Drive: /dev/hda
                             Size: 4099866624 bytes
              Heads: 128   Sectors per Track: 63   Cylinders: 993

    Name        Flags      Part Type  FS Type          [Label]        Size (MB)
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    hda3                    Primary   Compaq diagnostics                  16.52 
    hda1                    Primary   NTFS                               912.46
    hda5                    Logical   Linux ext2                         644.09
    hda6        NC          Logical   Linux swap                         132.13
    hda7                    Logical   Linux ext2                        1676.28
    hda8                    Logical   FAT16            [OSTATNI]         718.41
................

address@hidden parted 
GNU Parted 1.4.23
Copyright (C) 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This program is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License for more details.

Using /dev/hda
Warning: Unable to align partition properly.  This probably means that another
partitioning tool generated an incorrect partition table, because it didn't have
the correct BIOS geometry.  It is safe to ignore,but ignoring may cause
(fixable) problems with some boot loaders.
Ignore Cancel ? i
(parted) q
address@hidden fdisk /dev/hda

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/hda: 128 heads, 63 sectors, 993 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 8064 * 512 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1             5       225    891072    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2   *       226       993   3096576    5  Extended
/dev/hda3             1         4     16096+  12  Compaq diagnostics
/dev/hda5           226       381    628960+  83  Linux
/dev/hda6           382       413    129023+  82  Linux swap
/dev/hda7           414       819   1636960+  83  Linux
/dev/hda8           820       993    701536+   6  FAT16

Command (m for help): x

Expert command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/hda: 128 heads, 63 sectors, 993 cylinders

Nr AF  Hd Sec  Cyl  Hd Sec  Cyl   Start    Size ID
 1 00   0   1    4 127  63  224   32256 1782144 07
 2 80   0   1  225 127  63  992 1814400 6193152 05
 3 00   1   1    0 127  63    3      63   32193 12
 4 00   0   0    0   0   0    0       0       0 00
 5 00   1   1  225 127  63  380      63 1257921 83
 6 00   0   2  381 127  63  412       1  258047 82
 7 00   1   1  413 127  63  818      63 3273921 83
 8 00   1   1  819 127  63  992      63 1403073 06

Expert command (m for help): q

address@hidden fdisk /dev/hda

Command (m for help): v
248 unallocated sectors

Command (m for help): q

address@hidden