Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!ames!purdue!gatech!uflorida!haven!mimsy!jds
From: jds@mimsy.UUCP (James da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Problems (mkfs and > 10000 block file systems)...
Message-ID: <18472@mimsy.UUCP>
Date: 10 Jul 89 14:00:59 GMT
References: <4594@crash.cts.com>
Reply-To: jds@mimsy.umd.edu (James da Silva)
Organization: University of Maryland, Department of Computer Science
Lines: 48

In article <4594@crash.cts.com> jca@pnet01.cts.com (John C. Archambeau) writes:
>I puttered around with my friend's Miniscribe 6053 and Minix 1.3 and I found
>this nice problem in giving the /usr file system a 20 Mb partition.  mkfs
>coughs on file systems > 10000 blocks.  It will not create them.  Do I have to
>use a prototype file or what?  

John,

I've got a Minix filesystem with somewhere above 18000 blocks on the second
half of my 40 Meg Miniscribe.  I don't recall having any trouble making the
filesystem.  I did happen to use a prototype.

Several of the Minix utilities have the disk geometry hard-coded.  I
beleive the list is: mkfs, fdisk, and fsck.  Check for constants giving the
number of heads and number of sectors/track.  It's my guess that this is
what is biting you.

>40 Mb hard drives are becoming cheaper all the time...if there are any patches
>out there to make the file system utilities work with huge file systems and
>building file systems at a relative sector > 65535 I would like to hear from
>you.  

Are you referring to the trouble that standalone fsck has with filesystems
out beyond the 32 meg (64k sectors) mark?  Forget about the standalone
fsck.  You can build fsck to run under Minix, where it doesn't give a hoot
about absolute sectors; it just works on the /dev/hdx file.  I've modified
my tools/Makefile, changing what is currently the `fsck' binary to
`fsck.stand', and adding (from memory):

fsck: fsck.c
	cc -o fsck -Di8088 fsck.c

So I have both versions around.  fsck goes in /bin, and fsck.stand is used
to build boot images.  You do have to be careful about fsck'ing an active
filesystem.  I check my 18 Meg /u partition before mounting it.

>And now a bug report...
> 
>Minix 1.3 will work with the NCL FD/HD controller providing you don't use
>Minix's fdisk.  Apparently the NCL controller has a difficult time writing
>absolute sectors.

Are you sure?  Check the constant for the # of heads in fdisk.c.

Jaime
...........................................................................
: domain: jds@mimsy.umd.edu				     James da Silva
: path:   uunet!mimsy!jds