[robert2513]

Hi there.

I am currently trying to setup a computer dual booting Windows XP Pro and Fedora Core 2. I understand there is a problem with this setup; something with Fedora changing the drive geometry causing Windows not to boot. I found the remedy here:

http://lwn.net/Articles/86835/

After reviewing it, and running the command in Fedora Rescue :

fdisk -l /dev/hda

I get the following:

Disk /dev/hda: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes
225 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7296 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device: /dev/hda1 Boot: * Start: 1 End: 7296 Blocks 5860588+
Id: 7 System: HPFS/NTFS

Now, my question is, is the cylinders amount the 7296 or the 16065? The reason I am asking is that in the example in the article, the number is something like 14593 and according to my read-out, my cylinders is 7296. The number 16065 seems more appropriate. I am new at linux, so forgive me if this is a stupid question.

Thank you.
Robert2513

[dago]

Robert2513,
for sure the number you're looking for is 7296 cylinders.
You should have something like that in your BIOS config.

What is written in your POST when your HD is detected? (just when you power on you computer)

[robert2513]

Thanks for the reply. When I turn on the computer, all I see is the Dell Loading Screen. The computer is a Dell Inspiron 9100 laptop.

[dago]

ok, are you familiar with BIOS handling?
if not, that's no problem if you do not change anything, we just want to "see" things, right?

Dell computers are different, usually to access BIOS you press "Del" after power up your computer.

I checked the net and seems you gotta try also
- "F1"
- pressing "Reset" twice
- "Ctrl" + "Alt" + "Enter"

once there, try "Autodetect Hard Drive" and take a look on the CHS parameters. Press "Esc" and select "Exit".

Don't save any modifications made.

Good luck.

[lotuseclat79]

Originally Posted by robert2513

Hi there.

I am currently trying to setup a computer dual booting Windows XP Pro and Fedora Core 2. I understand there is a problem with this setup; something with Fedora changing the drive geometry causing Windows not to boot. I found the remedy here:

http://lwn.net/Articles/86835/

After reviewing it, and running the command in Fedora Rescue :

fdisk -l /dev/hda

I get the following:

Disk /dev/hda: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes
225 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7296 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device: /dev/hda1 Boot: * Start: 1 End: 7296 Blocks 5860588+
Id: 7 System: HPFS/NTFS

Now, my question is, is the cylinders amount the 7296 or the 16065? The reason I am asking is that in the example in the article, the number is something like 14593 and according to my read-out, my cylinders is 7296. The number 16065 seems more appropriate. I am new at linux, so forgive me if this is a stupid question.

Thank you.
Robert2513

If you do a little calculation, you will be able to read between the lines of what the output information is saying: i.e. one cylinder consists of 16065 512-byte blocks or 8225280 bytes (each cylinder). And if you divide the total number of bytes of your 60GB disk (60011642880 bytes) by the number of bytes in each cylinder (8225280 bytes) you get 7296 cylinders!

-- Tom

P.S. Your question was not stupid, and I doubt that a hard disks drive geometry can be changed by any OS - as the disk drive manufacturer creates the disk to industry standards.

P.P.S. Good luck with your dual boot setup.

[I Fix 4 U]

well fc2 does have issues w/ drive geometry. it was clearly stated on their forums and site. I managed to get fc2 running fine with my windows box. I didnt install them on the same harddrive basically i didnt even touch my harddrive w/ xp but on the other i put grub and fc2 and made it bootable. it did mess up drive geom and i had to reconfigure grub myself to get xp to boot. but all was good.

[dago]

lotuseclat79,
disk geometry cannot be changed in the sense having a 60GB hard disk and setting it as a 80GB, for instance.

But, in my case, I have a 40GB disk. I'm totally free to choose either
CHS = 79406,16,63 or CHS=4981,255,63
I don't know why those numbers are equivalent. Does anybody know the math behind? (79405*X1+16*Y1+63*Z1 = 4981*X2+255*Y2+63*Z2 --> find X1,Y1,Z1 and X2,Y2,Z2 -- I guess is something like that)

My mobo is some old and it doesn't like C>65535, that means the second choice is the only one a have.

When I installed FC2, the thing screw up my HD as well, because I have H=255.

I had only FC2 on that disk, so the damage was almost nothing.

But that bug is unforgettable and I decide to say f***! to Red Hat and their crappy Fedora project -- I change to Conectiva and Suse

[I Fix 4 U]

yah i removed fedora it had too much problems. then i went to knoppix but since i could run it from cd i removed it. now i'm looking around. didnt like linspire, mandrake didn't work for some reason as it worked great on my other machines. my next try out will be gentoo if i have some time. if not i'll try to install MEPIS.

[saikee]

I have installed FC2 with a bunch of other Linux distros and XP on the same drive on various hard disks (IBM 60Gb and Maxtor 200Gb ATA133) and have yet to experience the geometry problem.

My FC2 is in hde2 below

Disk /dev/hde: 203.9 GB, 203928109056 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24792 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hde1 * 1 3187 25599546 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hde2 3188 4403 9767520 83 Linux
/dev/hde3 4404 5619 9767520 83 Linux
/dev/hde4 5620 24792 154007122+ 5 Extended
/dev/hde5 5620 5984 2931831 82 Linux swap
/dev/hde6 5985 7200 9767488+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde7 7201 7808 4883728+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde8 7809 9024 9767488+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde9 9025 9632 4883728+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde10 9633 10848 9767488+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde11 10849 11456 4883728+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde12 11457 12672 9767488+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde13 12673 13280 4883728+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde14 13281 14496 9767488+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde15 14497 15104 4883728+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde16 15105 16320 9767488+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde17 16321 16928 4883728+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde18 16929 18144 9767488+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde19 18145 18752 4883728+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde20 18753 19968 9767488+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde21 19969 20576 4883728+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde22 20577 21184 4883728+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde23 21185 21792 4883728+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde24 21793 22400 4883728+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde25 22401 23008 4883728+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde26 23009 23616 4883728+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde27 23617 24224 4883728+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde28 24225 24792 4562428+ 83 Linux

[dago]

Wow, that's really impressive! You may really like Linux...
How's your head BIOS config for that HD? Do you have Heads = 255?
I see fdisk is written that, but I want to know what is in BIOS.

BTW, during FC2 installation, have you done 'linux geometry=24792,255,63'? Or you have reformatted you disk?
That could be the secret, in my case I didn't know that bug, so I get in the worse way.

But it's not impossible to run FC2, that's not my point. I just don't feel comfortable with companies using my system as free trials for catching their bugs --> That's why I hate M$, and Red Hat have done the very same!

[lynch]

http://usalug.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2745

[I Fix 4 U]

i agree with both. Also during installation of FC i think thats where the drive geom problems start but i didnt have any. I just removed it because i had other problems. I was careful of what i selected and deselected in the installer and i made sure i did all my choices in advanced.
PS saikee's just likes linux and went a little far with the multiboot compliance.
Also another problem that might make xp unbootable. Fedora Core cannot properly handle setting up grub to dualboot xp. I spend about 2 hours and i figured out that i had to modify my menu.lst and add a few things.

[saikee]

OK, I have checked my BIOS information. My 200Gb Maxtor Diamond Plus 9 was detected by "auto" and no cylinder or head data was given. My other 60Gb drive was also auto-detected but the head and clinder data is displayed in the BIOS page. Both disks have LBA on.

Here is the menu.lst of my FC2. I have also Red Hat 9 in Partition hda11. The previous fdisk -l was printed off Suse 9.1. Suse names my boot drive as hde but FC2 goes with the majority and names the same disk as hda. Just an example to show FC2 works and doesn't cause geometry problem at least in my case. Thus the geometry problem may be hardware dependent. The FC2 has Slackware twice because I am in a process of pushing some distros to the rear end of the drive.

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You do not have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg.
# root (hd0,6)
# kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hda2
# initrd /boot/initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=100
splashimage=(hd0,1)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

title Fedora Core (2.6.7-1.494.2.2)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.7-1.494.2.2 ro root=/dev/hda2 rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.7-1.494.2.2.img

title floppy
root (fd0)
chainloader +1

title Wondows XP @ hda1
hide (hd0,2)
unhide (hd0,0)
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

itle SATA Wondows XP @ sda1
hide (hd0,0)
unhide (hd2,0)
map (hd0) (hd2)
map (hd2) (hd0)
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

title floppy
root (fd0)
chainloader +1

title Wondows Debain Sarge @ hda3
root (hd0,2)
chainloader +1

title Wondows Suse 9.1 @ hda6
root (hd0,5)
chainloader +1

title Wondows Vine 2.6 @ hda7
root (hd0,6)
chainloader +1

title Mandrake 9.2
root (hd0,7)
chainloader +1

title Slackware 10
root (hd0,8)
chainloader +1

title Knoppix 3.4
root (hd0,9)
chainloader +1

title Red Hat 9
root (hd0,10)
chainloader +1

title Lycoris 3
root (hd0,11)
chainloader +1

title Libranet 2.8.1
root (hd0,12)
chainloader +1

title Mandrake 10
root (hd0,13)
chainloader +1

title Knoppix 3.3
root (hd0,14)
chainloader +1

title Yoper
root (hd0,15)
chainloader +1

title Slax (not working)
root (hd0,16)
chainloader +1

title Mepis (problem)
root (hd0,17)
chainloader +1

title Kanotix
root (hd0,18)
chainloader +1

title empty
root (hd0,19)
chainloader +1

title Blax
root (hd0,20)
chainloader +1

title Tiny sofa
root (hd0,21)
chainloader +1

title empty
root (hd0,22)
chainloader +1

title Slackware 10 @ hda27
root (hd0,26)
chainloader +1

[I Fix 4 U]

looking at that saikee about how many partitions do you have in your extened and what is their size. do you use qtparted?

[saikee]

In my second last post the fdisk -l indicates 28 partitions with standard 5 or 10 Gb partitions for the Linux.

I have just dd another copy of the hard disk intending to reduce the 10 Gb partitions into 5Gb so that I can pack more of them in.

My current trouble are

(1) Some distro like FC2 can only report the first 16 partitions in fdisk

(2) Lilo is not ambitious and has not been written to accept more than 16 entries in the boot menu. Grub has no limit.

(3) Some distros, especially the small ones, have a problem of being installed in the rear end of the drive where the partition number is high.

No I don't use Qtparted. I just partition the hard disk the way I want and copy the installed Linux (from anoth hard disk) over using the tar or dd command. For a new one I obviously have to do an installation.