investigating some other problems I happened to find out that my partition table has something wrong
everything works fine, I can mount/umount , read/write etc on every partition I should be able to, but the fact that I've experienced some HD related problems makes me suspect that the cause has something to do with this (the problems I'm talking about basically caused always the system to hang during hardware recognition with both knoppix live and winxp installer cd. in the winxp case the problem disappeared disconnecting the hd. not checked with knoppix yet, but still..)
this is my config (I'll paste command outputs afterwards to make the post a little more readable)
up to date debian testing with 2.6.12 kernel
asus a7v8x mobo with 3 maxtor IDE hd
hd setup:
first hd (60GB):
FAT32 - 35GB - (share space between win and linux)
ext3 - 20GB - linux /
swap - 1.5GB - swap partition
ext3 - 50MB - I'll probably use this as /tmp, currently unmounted
second hd (120GB):
currently disconnected - single NTFS partition - data only
third hd (80GB):
NTFS - 20GB - WinXP
NTFS - 60GB - win program files
the reported problem has something to do with the first hd, but the third gives warnings too
this is the output of a sfdisk -l that reports the problem
Code:
root@1[knoppix]# sfdisk -l
Disk /dev/hda: 119150 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors/track
Warning: The partition table looks like it was made
for C/H/S=*/255/63 (instead of 119150/16/63).
For this listing I'll assume that geometry.
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0
Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 0+ 4714 4715- 37873206 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda2 7469 7475 7 56227+ 83 Linux
start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (1023,0,1)
/dev/hda3 4715 7272 2558 20547135 83 Linux
start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (1023,0,1)
/dev/hda4 7273 7468 196 1574370 82 Linux swap / Solaris
start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (1023,0,1)
Disk /dev/hdc: 158816 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors/track
Warning: extended partition does not start at a cylinder boundary.
DOS and Linux will interpret the contents differently.
Warning: The partition table looks like it was made
for C/H/S=*/255/63 (instead of 158816/16/63).
For this listing I'll assume that geometry.
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0
Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/hdc1 * 0+ 2549 2550- 20482843+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdc2 2550 9962 7413 59544922+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (1023,0,1)
/dev/hdc3 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/hdc4 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/hdc5 2550+ 9962 7413- 59544891 7 HPFS/NTFS
start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (1023,1,1)
this is what parted outputs (it's the same for third hd):
Code:
parted
GNU Parted 1.6.9
Copyright (C) 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This program is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
Using /UNIONFS/dev/hda
Warning: Unable to align partition properly. This probably means that another
partitioning tool generated an incorrect partition table, because it didn't have
the correct BIOS geometry. It is safe to ignore,but ignoring may cause
(fixable) problems with some boot loaders.
Ignore/Cancel? c
Information: The operating system thinks the geometry on /UNIONFS/dev/hda is
119150/16/63. Therefore, cylinder 1024 ends at 503.999M.
(parted) print
Warning: Unable to align partition properly. This probably means that another
partitioning tool generated an incorrect partition table, because it didn't have
the correct BIOS geometry. It is safe to ignore,but ignoring may cause
(fixable) problems with some boot loaders.
Ignore/Cancel? i
Disk geometry for /UNIONFS/dev/hda: 0.000-58644.140 megabytes
Disk label type: msdos
Minor Start End Type Filesystem Flags
1 0.031 36985.583 primary fat32 boot, lba
3 36985.583 57051.145 primary ext3
4 57051.145 58588.615 primary linux-swap
2 58588.616 58643.525 primary ext3
(parted) quit
Information: Don't forget to update /etc/fstab, if necessary.
