Hello,

I run a dual boot SSD with Win 7 and Linux Mint Rafaela lately I see this message when I boot to Mint.Both are running fine in spite of the warning message.

The attached .jpg shows the message I am getting when I boot Mint / Rafaela. It started appearing a few days ago and I haven't a clue what it means or why it's appearing. The last line with the "Kludge" in it, I always see that part, all above it is new.
The drive is an SSD and according to the Intel Toolbox program that came with the drive, it's healthy with no signs of degradation at all.

Mint works fine in spite of the odd message, no matter how many times I reboot it, it's always there and always the same.


Is Mint trying to tell me that my drive is failing for some reason?

Any suggestions will be appreciated!

Thank you,

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Try installing gparted and run check from a right-click in gparted on the partition.

Hi Habitual,

Thanks for the speedy reply!

With Gparted installed, if I right click on /dev/sda4 where Mint is installed, I don't see a lot of options relating to checking. In fact most of them are greyed out.

I get the choice to RESIZE-MOVE | UMOUNT MANAGE MOVE | INFORMATION

I don't know what I am looking for, but I hate to botch up the OS it's been working fine all this time with no problems!

Maybe I am not looking at the right place in Gparted, I did look at the menu bar with /dev/sda4 right clicked but didn't see any thing that I thought might be useful.

Thank you very much,

"IF"

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I'm stuck. Sorry.

I believe the partition has to be unmounted to check it.
Booting a LiveCD and using gParted on sda4 should enable the check option on sda4

I believe this is the equivalent to an fsck on the same.

You can't run a check on a partition that is mounted. You have to do it from the live Mint DVD or USB.
You should have "Check" on the right-click list, right above "Label"
Even when mounted, "Check" is there, greyed out.
If not, what version of gparted is that?

I don't think you have to worry about it.

This looks to be an older BIOS definition for larger disks - and the kernel is just correcting the definition.

The BIOS specified values are only used until the boot (grub/grub2/lilo/...) gets loaded, and those use the BIOS I/O functions to load the kernel and initrd. Once the kernel is loaded, the BIOS definitions become a "don't care anymore", though the device definitions are provided to the kernel, the kernel is not bound to use them - and will use what the disk formatter tells the system it has.

Jpollard, Are you saying don't worry about the message or the fact I can't enable the check in Gparted? I hope it's the former

Nothing has changed system-wise and it makes me wonder why I never got this message before. As I stated before, everything seems to running fine, knock on wood.

Could it be that an update to Mint caused this to appear now on every boot?

Thanks to all

I believe you should have a backup strategy that includes tested backups.
I'd ignore the message under those conditions.

It could be an "SSD thing", but I don't know.

Habitual,

I do have an Acronis backup of the system, in fact 3 of them. But since the backups run once a week I doubt that I have one sans the message on boot up.

That said I WAS able to run Gparted from a disc I had and run a check.... it only took a second, said the "check is complete" and it was done. I booted up and lo and behold NO odd message. I wanted to run Gparted from the CD but I couldn't find it last night. Makes sense you can't check drive that you are using.

So all is well right now thank you and all the others for the help, it is most appreciated this is the first glitch I've had since installed Mint and upgrading it to Rafaela. Speaks volumes about the reliability compared to Windows. I will most definitely NOT be moving to Win 10, 7 is as far as I intend to go it will be 7 and Linux from now on!

Oh someone asked what version of Gparted.. it is 0.18.08.0-2 i486 at least that's what I wrote on the disc.

Again many thanks and best regards to all who helped!

"IF"

Well, my backups are for data
The OS, not so much. I can re-install in 15 minutes.
Separate /home is a life-saver.

Glad it worked out!

It could very well have been a kernel update that recognized that.

Hi jollard,

Well it might have been, but I am sorry to report the message is back again! Grrr!

System runs normally I hate to ignore messages but maybe in this case I have to?

Thought it was sorted when I ran Gparted and the "check' that did cure it on a few reboots but now it's back and I'm scratching my head!

thank you for any input you or anyone else may have,

"IF"

It has happened to others after system updates. I googled for "!! number of heads for drive 80 restored from", and it has happend a good bit over the years (2012 was the oldest on the first page).

It appears innocuous. It MIGHT go away if the partition table/partition is recreated, but I lean more toward the BIOS initiating this. I remember the old time that specifying 255 caused the BIOS to overflow the field in the controller so that larger disks could be handled.

Now that BIOS handles LBA properly, this has disappeared. One thought just occurred - If the BIOS can handle LBA, could it have gotten set/reset to using cylinder/head/sector (CHS) addressing?

How was this "update" done exactly?

Regular only will update Level[123] - same as Update Manager. Kernels are not in this 'set'.
and is Levels[1-5], kernels are in this this 'set'.

Off-hand, I'd boot another LiveCD and run check, or just ignore the message.
Have you considered upgrading to 17.3?