Re: Disk geometry error (Fag 14.6)

["Chris Zakelj" <c.zakelj@ieee.org>]

Actually, no.  You'll find that oBSD is also probably reporting 255 heads
(while there are only 16 on the sticker) in the dmesg.  This is because
modern BIOSes use LBA addressing instead of CHS.  In fact, you'll find that
16383/16/63 in the CHS system corresponds to the 8G limit of older
computers.  Likewise, there's a cap at 4096/16/63 (2G) beyond which some
BIOSes won't POST (my i586-90, for instance) and OSes (DOS) can't use
without driver software.  You need to make sure your /bsd file is within
your particular BIOS' boot window (Cylinder 1024, 4096, or 16383).  Read the
FAQs for the appropriate method of doing this.

(Unlike some, I enjoy spoon-feeding old-arch info, but leaving the actual
solution just one or two links away.  This particularly honks off the
penguinistas)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-misc@openbsd.org [mailto:owner-misc@openbsd.org]On Behalf Of
> Venice Miazza
> Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2003 6:27 PM
> To: nick@holland-consulting.net; misc@openbsd.org
> Subject: Re: Disk geometry error (Fag 14.6)
>
>
> Thanks to your request for more info about my
> hardware, I unscrewed the machine to find out. On the
> hard disk label, it said it had 16383 (2^14 - 1)
> cylinders. (Thank you flashlight!) In binary, that
> would be 11 1111 1111 1111 cylinders. However, the
> OpenBSD install program said I only had 5955
> cylinders. In binary, that's 1 0111 0100 0011
> cylinders.
>
> That qualifies as a disk geometry error, doesn't it?
>
> Is that all you need to know?
>
> (In case not, I have a Pheonix BIOS and an AMD Athlon
> Processor, and was trying to install OpenBSD 3.3. I am
> currently downloading the intall packages for OpenBSD
> 3.4, though. It'll take awhile. Dial-up. I allocated
> the first 2700 cylinders to OpenBSD. On the rest I was
> going to install a operating system that's compatible
> with Winmodem. Any suggestions on a secure operating
> system that meets that requirement?)
>
> btw - According to some Debian people I know, it's
> called "hanging" whether it prints once and doesn't
> move on or prints infinitely and doesn't move on.
>
> --- Nick Holland <> wrote:
> > yikes.  Please wrape your lines, and otherwise beat
> > on your mail
> > program to make it work better.
>
> Sorry, I probably accidentally told it to allow HTML
> tags, which would cause it to ignore white space.
> (Actually, this is web-based email, not a mail
> program. I don't even know how a mail program works. I
> find this more secure for my purposes. Besides, this
> isn't my computer.)
>
> >
> > Venice Miazza wrote:
> > >
> (Note - This Faq 14.6 was ommitted from openbsd.org,
> but can still be found
> here:
>
> tech.zone.ee/openbsd/faq/faq14.html#D0P3)
>
> I've been trying to install OpenBSD on an i386
> hewlett-packard that used to run Windows ME, which was
> horribly insecure. Just when I thought I had finally
> installed it correctly, and I rebooted, it printed the
> following line over and over -
>
> Using Drive: 0 Partition: 0
>
> That makes sense - that's where I installed OpenBSD,
> except it did that all night. After some initial
> research and help from a friend, I thought it was a
> BIOS incompatibility problem, and went  into my BIOS
> and changed the Large handle format thingy.
>
> I still got the same error, even when I went through
> the installation process all over.
>
> Then after more research, I found that it was actually
> a disk geometry error (see faq), and executed the
> lines of commands it said to execute from the shell
> that comes with floppy33.fs.
>
> Still, I got the same error.
>
> Then I realized the faq said I could get this error if
> I changed my BIOS, so I changed that back to the
> default and ran the commands again. I'm still getting
> that error. What should I try now? (Please help?)
> >
> > That is, btw., a broken mirror.  Hasn't been updated
> > in over five
> > months, apparently.
> >
> > The reason it was removed is because people were
> > reading symptoms
> > without understanding the reasons detailed in it,
> > and it was causing
> > more harm than good.  The real probem was with the
> > incompatable boot
> > loader, which seems to have been fixed very nicely
> > back in 3.1.  Truth
> > of the matter is, the reason this article even
> > mentioned the drive
> > geometry issue was that the OLD FAQ article on that
> > topic claimed that
> > was the reason, and as the first FAQ article I
> > (re)wrote, I didn't
> > quite want to tell my supervisor that the article
> > that was there
> > previously on this topic (which he may have wrote)
> > was COMPLETELY
> > wrong (and I still can not prove that a drive
> > geometry problem NEVER
> > caused a boot hang like that...but I doubt it. 8)
> >
> > If you read that article closely, it was about
> > getting the message and
> > a HANG, not a repeating message ("over and over") as
> > you describe.
> >
> > Whatever you have going on, I do not think it is a
> > drive geometry
> > problem.  Unfortunately, knowing nothing about your
> > machine except
> > some idea what the logo on the front of it might
> > look like.  It is
> > POSSIBLE you have somehow got a corrupted MBR on
> > your disk (how??), or
> > maybe you have the one machine in the world that is
> > incompatable with
> > the OpenBSD MBR code.  I'd start with following the
> > advice in that old
> > FAQ about using a DOS 6.x+ boot disk and doing an
> > "FDISK /MBR".  Don't
> > know if it will fix your problem, but it will
> > certainly change the
> > symptoms (the "Using drive X partition Y" message
> > comes out of the
> > OpenBSD MBR code.  If you do the DOS "FDISK /MBR"
> > thing properly, you
> > replace that code).
> >
> > Huh.  Wonder if a BIOS "Virus protection" feature
> > being enabled could
> > result in a mangled MBR install...*might* explain my
> > "how??" above...
> >
> > Get us some more info...
> >    http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq2.html#Bugs
> >    http://www.openbsd.org/report.html
> >    http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#getdmesg
> >
> > Nick.
> > --
> > http://www.holland-consulting.net
> >
>
>
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