Just wanted to share my experience.
Laptop was initally dual boot XP Home(hda1) and fc2(hda5).
Installed FC3 and it was glitchless.
After the installtion was able to boot both FC3 and XP Home.
Nothing seemed to be wrong at this point of time.

I typically make an image of my OS, so that i can restore them anytime.
Tried to use Norton Ghost 8 to make an image of FC3 and thats when i received this error:
Application Error 2004
Read sector failure
result=1, drive=0
sectors 2091227287 to 2091227295

Startled by this message, I fired up Partition magic in Win XP.
Partion Magic 8.0 in XP Home detected discrepancies in LBA and CHS.
It found LBA to be correct and attempted to correct CHS value.
After correcting the value, Ghost was still unable to make an image.

I suspected i was affected by the dual boot bug even though I didnt encounter it in FC2.
(Bug reported: bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=115980)

Followed instructions from: lwn.net/Articles/86835/
It seems Windows uses the CHS system and Fedora core uses LBA to define disk geometry.
fdisk -l /dev/hda to find out CHS is 3876,240,63

Reinstalled FC3 at boot entered linux hda=3876,240,63
Both FC3 and XP were able to boot again, but ghost still detected sector problems.

Booted with FC3 rescue disk.
Issued the following command.
sfdisk -d /dev/hda | sfdisk --no-reread -H255 /dev/hda
The partition table seems to be fixed, but the problem with Ghost and partition magic persisted.
Also tried with values -H240.

Unfortunately my laptop bios has no option to use switch from Auto to LBA.
Finally gave up.

Used XP disk to delete hda5.
Used Partion Magic to create hda5 ext3.
Used Ghost to restore my old FC2.
Used Knoppix to reinstall grub:
grub
find /boot/grub/stage1
root(hd0,4)
setup (hd0)
quit

Perhaps unlike the dual boot bug in FC2, both partitions in FC3/XP can boot.
However the sectors may be messed up, and you might not even notice it.
What i have found out after googling is that this affects mandrake and suse users too.
It is more of a 2.6 kernel bug, although it didnt happen to me in FC2.
It is worse for laptop owners who do not have the option to change to LBA.
Kinda disppointed that the kernel maintainers did not think of such issues.
Also disappointed that the workarounds to pass arguments to the installer of FC3 do not work.

Guess i will stick to FC2 for the time being..

martx

this is a known bug of FC2 but since you have knoppix, try using knoppix partition tools either fdisk or cfdisk or graphical qtparted.....then install FC3 using the new existing partitions......assuming you fixed your xp stuff.

the link is in my sig

Thanks done that, but it doesn't work.

Btw, the solution you described is for FC2, not FC3. Nonetheless if you read in my post you will realise i have already exhausted all the options in it.

Moreover unlike the problem in FC2, this case both windows and linux will boot fine, just that the sectors seem to overlap.

Anyway bug reported already.
bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=138419
bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=138866

redo cfddisk but find the option to change from Mb the default to CYLINDERS which will partition at cylinder boundaries and so NO OVERLAP sorry about the shouting but I want to be clear.

Martx has it exactly right. I am a newbie, trying to install Mandrake 10.1 to my windows machine. It seems to work until you use Partiton Magic (in windows) to view the partitions, and they are messed up. It is the CHS and the LBA thing. Partition Magic says they must equal, and after linux gets done with them, they don't.

I am having he exact same problem here ! Safe and easy backup making
is vital to all of us!

Anyone came up with a solution?

PS I have managed to make a complete backup of my system using norton
ghost 9 but ghost 9 saw my fc3 partition as full (which actually
isn't). I haven't restored it to verify . Also sense norton thinks my
partition is full the image is way to big

Please someone help us!

use www.partimage.org for your backups of partitions.

naturally it helps if you had separate parts /boot / and /usr are mine with all other stuff as sub-folders to /

it also helps to burn those images to a cd.

DO not attempt to use norton if misreports your data size.

for anyone with the smaller needs you can use the command split to split files over a floppy

eg

split -b 1400k mybigfile.mp3

creates files of 1400 Kb called xaa xab etc

to restore

copy files into one directory
cat xa* > bybigfile.mp3

and test it

Parimage also crashed!!

Thanks aus9 for your suggestions. You seriously sound like you work in partimage, but if you have tried you will know that partimage will have the same problems as norton ghost.

If you read the bugzilla reports you will understand this problem is caused by a faulty parted program in FC3, and the problem is still currently being resolved.

When will this be resolved anyway? Does anybody know how much it usually takes to fix such a serious bug ?

News
Go : https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla....cgi?id=138866

Anyone?

I am testing a new computer so forgive any slowness, its intentional , heh heh

Braveheart1980 you raise 2 issues. If you care to start a new thread on what you have done with partimage and I or others will endevour to help. btw I consider myself a fair user of this lovely program.

issue (2) I will boringly comment that my link file....ignores the bug reports.....it says use an independent partition tool to partition your drive.....and you backup your mbr and partition table via the link instructions or whatever cd you have like knoppix.........and I do not recommend using any program that is not linux to play with your partition table...but you probably have guessed that by now.......

martx
thanks for your comments on partimage....my reply to braveheart was on backing up but of course it can only backup in the spirit of junk in junk out....if braveheart or your file system is not perfect the backup can only be as bad.

I have read that norton ghost reports some linux filesystems as data size=partition size and that should ring alarm bells for anyone.

I dont use LBA myself so I may be wrong for both of you but if your partitiion tool is writing a table based on cylinders sectors heads etc you can not change midstream without some grief in my humble opinion.

This may sound rude, but do you realise what you are doing when you agree to fix something....if the partition table was not LVM making changes is not recommended, I dont know how brutal to make my opinion on that.

AND in case you have not understood the finer point of partimage......you can only write an image of a partition that is UNMOUNTED and thererfore not active and so has no data being written to it. I am sure you know that but just in case others read it and think you use it as a IN-HOUSE backup.

Hiya asus, thanks again for your help!
Actually braveheart and me seem to be talking about the same thing.
Let me summarise again. Perhaps you could give us some suggestions.

1. A dual boot system of WinXP and FC3 is installed with no problems.
Both can boot. Seems fine until you do a backup.
2. Ghosts reports some sector cannot read. Partimage just stops.
3. If you try to partition using fdisk or any linux cd and then install FC3,
FC3's parted will overwrite the partitions. So this solution does not work.
4. Ghost is version 8 and above so it can handle linux partitions unlike previous versions.
5. Bios has no option to use LBA and sfdisk info which was provided in your link dont work.

Could you help me check out
http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=138866
http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=138419
and see what you make of it? Other people who have tried attribute it to a faulty parted program.
In fact a patched ISO file was provided but i dont have a floppy drive to test it out.

Hiaz funny thing though FC2 worked fine for me.
Asus please help us! Perhaps you could recreate the senario of a dual boot system and try to make a backup of it with partimage.
Really hope to get it to work.

Thanks!
martx

I will answer on behalf of asus, I am aus9.

1) smarter people than me are looking at your issues and I do not use FC so can not help.
2) but I have read the bugs supplied and refer to your link 2 add post 94 who has a work around using a mdk partition tool then a new fix with PMagic.
3) having already said I am not skilled enough.....you may consider the following
FC is bleeding edge would be easier to move to Mdk ?
..a lot of those posters seem to have very casual idea of how robust their mbr is...its only 512 bytes and restricted to 4 primary partitions so if you want more than 4 parts you must use logical parts (or buy a special program which escapes me at the moment but resizes the mbr and makes your disk a little dependent on that program for you natural term, heh heh)
4) so no matter what your decision my advice is plan your partitions and never muck them up without knowing how to backup your mbr and partition table if you have more than 4 (min of 1 logical)
eg
/boot 100 megs
/MS for those who are undecided
/ (the root)
/usr
linux swap
/ backup called whatever you fancy

/usr will be /dev/hda5 and swap hda6

Before you image, you install MS and let it overwrite the mbr
then install linux using existing partitions but choose reiserfs

Then boot into knoppix (into ramdrive) and use with partimage and mount /backup
eg su and passwd (you need su rights to make a partition read writeable in knoppix)
mkdir /false ( directory in ram that has a name not of the linux type)
mount -t reiserfs /dev/hda7 /false
partimage (program starts)
then arrow down to /dev/hda2 (MS) then tab to the dotted line
/2/msimage1.gz and press F5 and off you go
redo partimage for others parts except swap and of course your /backup
reboot into (say) mdk and use burner to write images to cd.

5) can you tell me what you did treat me as a simple person and list all steps for your fail in sfdisk

good luck with your decisions. If you are clever, dual boot is safe as long as you do not enable any network for MS. Staying with MS means you are with the 95 per cent enjoying MS and I am sure you catch my drift