Re: disk problems

[turnbull@example.com (Stephen J. Turnbull)]

>>>>> Craig Oda <craig@example.com> writes:

   These are some error messages at read time:

   hda: QUANTUM FIREBALL1080A, 1039MB w/83KB Cache, LBA, CHS=2112/16/63
   hdb: FX400_02, ATAPI CDROM drive

This is a bad sign; the CD-ROM and hard drive usually want to be on
separate interfaces.  I suspect that the reason is that a given driver 
hogs an IRQ, so that you're getting interference from the hard drive
driver:

[snip]
   hdb: command error: status=0x51
   hdb: command error: error=0x50
   end_request: I/O error, dev 03:40, sector 65
   isofs_read_super: bread failed, dev 03:40 iso_blknum 16
   hdb: code: 0x70  key: 0x05  asc: 0x64  ascq: 0x00
   Unable to identify CD-ROM format.

Try recompiling with the separate interfaces enabled.

Oo-er, maybe you don't have a disk in the drive?  Try putting one in
and mounting it?  Nah, can't be....

   niji:~# lilo
   geo_comp_addr: Cylinder number is too big (1026 > 1023)
   niji:~# 

Maybe you have an old LILO?  This I've never seen before.  If 1026 is
*not* the last cylinder, then maybe one of LILO's resources, probably
the kernel, is there.  Moving the kernel to a reasonable place might
help.  Or you could partition the drive, and put the swap area at the
top of the disk (that 41MB swap area will getyou under the 1023
cylinder limit).

   Paul just told me to check the BIOS.  Any other hints?

Yah, some recent BIOSes for SCSI do a different translation (instead
of 64 heads, they say they have 255 heads) that gets the cylinder
count down.  Maybe you can pull something like that.

-- 
                            Stephen J. Turnbull
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences                    Yaseppochi-Gumi
University of Tsukuba                      http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/
Tennodai 1-1-1, Tsukuba, 305 JAPAN                 turnbull@example.com