Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!munnari.oz.au!metro!natmlab.dap.csiro.au!ditsydh.syd.dit.CSIRO.AU!evans
From: evans@syd.dit.CSIRO.AU (Bruce.Evans)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Need HELP with Minix 1.3 & hard disk on XT!!
Message-ID: <1990Oct21.205558.17923@syd.dit.CSIRO.AU>
Date: 21 Oct 90 20:55:58 GMT
References: <1295@umvlsi.ecs.umass.edu>
Organization: CSIRO Division of Info Tech, Sydney, Australia
Lines: 25

In article <1295@umvlsi.ecs.umass.edu> kimmel@umvlsi.ecs.umass.edu (Mathew Kimmel) writes:
>partition).  If I attempt to make a file system on /dev/hd5 (the whole
>disk disregarding partitions, major device 3 minor device 5), it works
>and will access that file system reliably and consistently, but will
>only make the file system using half the available disk space (10 megs'
>worth, about 10400 blocks).  If I try to make the file system with any
>more blocks than that, I get an unrecoverable disk error.

Never make a file system on /dev/hd0 ot /dev/hd5. It will wipe out the
partition table.

The size of the whole disk is read from the ROM. On XT's it is hard for
that to be right for 2 drives. The driver assumes the drives have the
same geometry unless AUTO_BIOS is used.

It is easy to get the hd numbers mixed up. Various programs have
different ideas about the order of the partitions, and the Minix driver
sorts them, so you cannot have hd8 without a nonempty hd6 and hd7. The
Minix-1.5 fdisk gives warnings about things like this.

If you are not sure what you are doing, try running readall (preferably
the 1.5 version) to count the sizes of the partitions before even
thinking of running mkfs.
-- 
Bruce Evans		evans@syd.dit.csiro.au