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Topic: fdisk/cfdisk probs w/large drives?, partitions on drive not recognized

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AwPhuch

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Joined: April 2004

Posted: Oct. 21 2004,16:01

Plus I think those other distros create a /boot parition in which it is smaller than the 1024Bytes...

DSL creates one large honkering / partition in which the other directories are located....

Perhaps if you created a 10-15Meg /boot parition on say /dev/hda1 and the larger / dir on /dev/hda2 it might recognize it and use the /boot partition and fix your problem

Brian
AwPhuch

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msuho

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Posted: Oct. 22 2004,02:30

I don't think it's the tiny partition thing.

If I boot up DSL & look at my drive, I get:

fdisk root@box:~# fdisk -l /dev/hda

Disk /dev/hda: 2113 MB, 2113536000 bytes
64 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1023 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 4032 * 512 = 2064384 bytes

For comparasion's sake, I loaded Suse 9.1, and ran the same command:

linux:/home/msuho # fdisk -l /dev/hda

Disk /dev/hda: 20.4 GB, 20490559488 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 39703 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 39001 19656472+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 39002 39703 353808 82 Linux swap

Look at the disk size & the number of cylinders- different. Same disk. Same BIOS. Notice, too, that Suse's booting out of one big partiotion. I don't know if it's the kernel or the fdisk command.

I really appreciate all the advice & suggestions. I may just have to be content with using DSL from one of my other boxes.

Thanks,

Mark

cbagger01

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Posted: Oct. 22 2004,04:59

I wonder if the "gnu-utils.dsl" extension contains a different version of the cfdisk or fdisk utility?

Try installing this extension and then see what your drive configuration looks like.

skaos

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Posted: Oct. 22 2004,09:49

Two suggestions:
- make a 1 GB partition at the beginning of the disk and install DSL.
- look up the heads/cyls/sectors info for your disk and compare to the output from Suse and DSL fdisk. If they are the same as the Suse fdisk info, try to set/force them at the DSl boot:-prompt.

Suse vs. DSL: Could it be that the Suse kernel is placed within the first 8GB, and the DSL outside (just guessing though)?

msuho

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Joined: Oct. 2004

Posted: Oct. 26 2004,03:22

I wanted to fllow up on this thread, as so many folks gave me good ideas.

I got an updated AMIBIOS BIOS for my motherboard from eSupport, with large drive support (yeah, actually paid $$$ for it) . I flashed the BIOS, and tried again. fdisk still does recognized existing partitions or the partition table, nor will it let me write changes if I try to create them all from scratch.
I've screwed around with this for almost a week- I admit defeat.

A curious aside- I mentioned in a previous post that I had the same proble with Knoppix 3.3. Well, I tried Knoppix 3.6 over the weekend- the fdisk & knoppix-install scripts worked fine on this box. But it's way more that I want.

I still am using DSL on two other machines (I boot off a USB stick on one, have it installed on the HD on the other), so I'm not giving it up- I just wanted to stick to one distibution on all my boxes.

Thanks again, guys-

Mark

18 replies since Oct. 19 2004,21:51

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