Re: 2.6.x partition breakage and dual booting

Andries Brouwer
2004-06-03T15:28:40Z

On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 04:35:38PM +0200, Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz wrote:

> > Yes and not... HDIO_GETGEO still exists and report inconsistent
> > informations. IMHO should be removed. I know this breaks some existing
> > programs however these programs do not actually works correctly.
>
> Hm, you are right - HDIO_GETGEO returns different information in 2.4 and 2.6.
>
> Andries, what is your opinion?

HDIO_GETGEO returns 4 fields.

There is unsigned long start; giving the starting cylinder
of a partition. It is valid, and there is some software that
uses it. It will work until the disks get larger than 2 TB
(that is, today).
And there are heads, sectors, cylinders.
This is mostly garbage. Naive use is not recommended.
Semantics in 2.0 / 2.2 / 2.4 / 2.6 all different.

> You can export needed information through /proc/ide/.

Not recommended.

Andries