Date: Fri, 17 Dec 1999 15:41:45 -0800 (PST) From: tod@quay.com To: freebsd-gnats-submit@freebsd.org Subject: misc/15546: Need to enable LBA flag for large IDE disks (40GB Maxtor 94098U8) Message-ID: <19991217234145.3AAF414A24@hub.freebsd.org>
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>Number: 15546 >Category: misc >Synopsis: Need to enable LBA flag for large IDE disks (40GB Maxtor 94098U8) >Confidential: no >Severity: non-critical >Priority: low >Responsible: freebsd-bugs >State: open >Quarter: >Keywords: >Date-Required: >Class: change-request >Submitter-Id: current-users >Arrival-Date: Fri Dec 17 15:50:00 PST 1999 >Closed-Date: >Last-Modified: >Originator: Tod Oace >Release: 3.3 Stable >Organization: Quay Communique' >Environment: FreeBSD mist.quay.com 3.3-RELEASE FreeBSD 3.3-RELEASE #0: Fri Dec 17 14:11:45 PST 1999 tod@mist.quay.com:/usr/src/sys/compile/INSIDE i386 >Description: I had a bad experience installing my new 40GB Maxtor hard drive, but ultimately figured out a work-around. I'm submitting this to try and help others avoid the experience I had. The first problem I had was with my Award BIOS getting stuck in POST. I obtained a BIOS upgrade which didn't help. But disabling the drive in the BIOS setup did work since it's not my boot drive, and FreeBSD does a good job of finding it. The boot problem is mentioned at: http://www.maxtor.com/satisfaction/32gbissues.html. Once I booted FreeBSD with the new drive I made the fdisk and FreeBSD labels and then newfs'd. Newsf almost finished (did all the counting up) but died near the end with a "Read-only file system" error. Fsck and mount attempts failed complaining about lack of a superblock. FreeBSD seems to have a 16 bit cylinder numbering limitation which I believe is what was causing the mysterious problem. The BIOS was reporting more than 65536 cylinders, but FreeBSD's fdisk wasn't allowing it. And while fdisk made a warning about this and computed LBA sizing for the disk, newfs couldn't complete with it. Finally I somehow realized that FreeBSD needed to start using LBA sizing for that drive and I found the kernel configuration options for that, and now everything is great again. So... To help other people avoid this, and I do think other people will be running into this soon, I think the fdisk should suggest that LBA be enabled within the kernel. It should do this when it complains about CHS size. Better yet, FreeBSD should deal with more than 16 bits of cylinder numbering. >How-To-Repeat: Install a Maxtor 40GB IDE drive without enabling LBA in FreeBSD's driver, create a label with one filesystem for the whole drive and attempt to newfs. Newfs will almost finish and then die with "Read-only file system". >Fix: Enable LBA option for the drive in the FreeBSD kernel configuration. >Release-Note: >Audit-Trail: >Unformatted: To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-bugs" in the body of the message
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