Alan Cox wrote:
> > As stated in my last email, I am using EDD. I only need the legacy heads
> > and sectors. I can figure out the cylinders by that and the size of the
> > disk.
>
> Which legacy size do you want though - the partition label, the disks
> opinion this week or the CMOS. They can all be different. Linux used to
> play "guess roughly what Windows might guess".
I think what I wanted got burried in a small geometry war.
> > I have some utils (mkdosfs comes to mind) that do not let the user specify
> > heads/sectors/cyls (it doesn't use cyl actually).
>
> Presumably they need to follow the MS sequence of guesses then, even on
> non PC systems ? So partition table, cmos, drive in that order if I
> remember rightly.
Not the initial problem.
Let me try to state what I originally wanted.
I am currently using edd to get the legacy heads and sectors then using that
and the size of the disk, I deduce the cylinders. Works great, no problems.
fdisk will let me specify and it works great. Ok, so I can do this guessing
game just fine.
Now, i have programs that I can't tell it the geometry (which it does use
and requires to be correct. My guesses using edd are correct). I was using
/proc/ide/hdX/settings to tell the kernel what geometry I want so the
programs that can only ask the kernel can get it right.
2.6.12-rc2. Works great. But what's this? it's obsolete? Ok, it's
obsolete, what is the non-obsolete way of SETTING the geometry. I looked at
ide.c and there's no HDSETGEO. I considered writing this myself or
unobsolete the /proc interface for my kernels, but if there's a "right" way
of doing this, I'd rather do it.
If the "right" way is via IOCTL, my scripts are written in perl that do the
bulk of the guess work.
I did not want this to be a geometry flame war. I realize linux doesn't
give a flying whatever about the geometry (only the number of sectors). The
systems I'm doing this with run OSs other than linux and they do care (i
wish they didn't!) I wasn't asking this for someone to tell me I didn't
need it.
--
Lab tests show that use of micro$oft causes cancer in lab animals
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