From: mcw1@crux3.cit.cornell.edu (Michael C. Williams) Subject: IDE HD / [e]fs / landing zone problems.. What to do? Date: 14 Mar 1993 16:53:04 GMT
OK.. earlier I posted some stuff about having HD controller errors when using
mkefs and mkfs. They looked something like this:
HD: read_intro : status = 0x59
HD: read_intro : error = 0x10
This continued for a long time, but I was able to get a valid FS going. Later,
my kernal would run into these same errors and freak out, hang, and generally
decide to die. After some frustration, I sat and watched it try to do a mkefs
on my hard drive with -c enabled. It got within 100 blocks of being done, and
started having the same problem again. What I realized was that the landing
zone on the hard drive was the last cylinder that I had included in the Linux
Extfs partition. I went back to fdisk, made the partition one cylinder smaller,
and tried again. No errors. Everything has been perfect since then. My
questions then are these:
1) Is the reason that this happened drive-type dependant? Will it also
happen on an MFM, RLL or SCSI drive? Does anyone else have their landing zone
as part of their partition?
2) Is there a way to make fdisk aware of this? Is it detectable to any calls?
Can the drive card or software tell that it is an invalid cylinder?
3) Is there a way to keep the kernal from allowing this, or building some
protection for this into it/mk[e]fs/fdisk?
4) Does anyone else have this or similar problems?
Please e-mail me with any information.. I am very curious as to what actually
was happening. I can re-post any info I am sent.
Grats.
Michael