Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 15 Jun 1999 10:53:32 -0400
From:      Steve Richardson <prefect@sidehack.sat.gweep.net>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   2.2.7 -> 2.2.8, large IDE disk
Message-ID:  <19990615105332.A13193@sidehack.sat.gweep.net>

next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
** note: please CC: me, as I am not subscribed to the freebsd-questions list
due to the volume of mail **


Hello,

I run FreeBSD 2.2.7-STABLE on a machine, and I recently added a new disk to
the machine.  Unfortunately, the machine is IDE-based.

I added a 10 gig Maxtor IDE disk on the second channel, and ran in to some
problems with 2.2.7 recognizing anything past 16K cylinders.  2.2.7 reports
the following on boot:

wdc1: unit 0 (wd2): <Maxtor 91010E6>
wd2: 8063MB (16514064 sectors), 16383 cyls, 16 heads, 63 S/T, 512 B/S

The disk is actually 19386 cylinders.  I thought the 16383 looked awfully
suspicious, so I poked around more and learned that 2.2.8 fixes this issue.

The trouble is, I partitioned and labeled the disk to what the kernel sees,
giving up 2 gig.  It's up and running with some critical things (/var, my
news spool, etc.).


fdisk reports back:

******* Working on device /dev/rwd2 *******
parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are:
cylinders=16383 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 blks/cyl)

Figures below won't work with BIOS for partitions not in cyl 1
parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are:
cylinders=16383 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 blks/cyl)

Media sector size is 512
Warning: BIOS sector numbering starts with sector 1
Information from DOS bootblock is:
The data for partition 1 is:
sysid 165,(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
start 63, size 16514001 (8063 Meg), flag 80 (active)
beg: cyl 0/ sector 1/ head 1;
end: cyl 1023/ sector 63/ head 15
The data for partition 2 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 3 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 4 is:
<UNUSED>


The big question I have is this:  If I build 2.2.8 and reboot, will the
existing partitioning scheme still work?  Will something get messed in the
translation process when the kernel suddenly realizes that there are more
cylinders than before?

And, after safely booting up again - can I safely add a new partition to use
up the rest of the disk that wasn't previously available?  Ideally I would
expand the original partition, but I'm guessing that won't be a viable
option.  I am not opposed to creating a second partition and some new slices
(under /dev/wd2s2x I presume).

Any experience? Tips? Advice?  The machine typically has 40-50 people logged
in during the day, and serves over 150 total.. It's also co-located, so I
don't have convenient console access (though I do have some).  In other
words, I can't break it! :)

Thanks in advance,
Steve

-- 

 Stephen S. Richardson                  The GweepCo Cooperative Network
 prefect@gweep.net                      network access * technology vulturing
 http://www.gweep.net/~prefect/         http://www.gweep.net/


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?19990615105332.A13193>