I just installed a 27.7GB Maxtor hard drive. My BIOS was set to LBA mode (Geometry of hda=3310,255,63). This is a dual boot system and I wanted to create a configuration something like: hda1: 15MB ext2 for /boot hda2: 1536MB fat32 for c: hda3: 1536MB ext2 for / hda4: Extended partition with rest of free space hda5: 6144MB fat32 for d: hda6: 4096MB fat32 for e: hda7: 6144MB ext2 for /usr hda8: 4096MB ext2 for /home (swap on a seperate disk) If I created these partitions using Partition Magic 4.0, disk druid would fail to recognize the partition table during the RedHat Install. Trying to load Linux fdisk from a boot diskette resulted in an "Unable to read" error message. If I created these partitions using Fdisk, I would get a "Unable to write" error message when I tried to write & exit. After that, I got "Unable to read" error messages when I tried to load fdisk again. I tried several different partition configurations and the problem seemed to stem from some combination of the number of partitions I created and possibly the starting point of the last partition I created. For example, the above configuration could not be read, but if I *was* able to create the partition and then create several 100MB partitions inside the extended partition without a problem. I could also create several small parititions at the end of the disk without running into a problem. I did finally come up with a way to install my dual boot system, but I now have a parition table that fdisk cannot read. This does not bother me now (because I'm past the installation) but I will have a problem in the future if I attempt to upgrade the system. My work around to install RedHat was to install to a small 1.5GB / partition without creating the D:, E:, /usr, and /home partitions. Then, after I finished installing Windoze and RedHat 6.1, I used Partition Magic to create the additional partitions. Then I copied the /usr and /home directories from my / partition onto the new ext2 partitions and used linuxconf to add mount points for /usr and /home to the new partitions. Obviously the Linux kernel has no problem reading the paritions, I only ran into a problem while using fdisk and disk druid.
Not sure if this is connected with your problem, but do you have all the partitions starting and finishing on cylinder boundaries? Given the numbers you qoute, I would expect to see the following partition table created: /dev/hda1 * 1 2 16033+ 83 Linux native /dev/hda2 3 198 1574370 b Win95 FAT32 /dev/hda3 199 394 1574370 83 Linux native /dev/hda4 395 3310 23422770 5 Extended /dev/hda5 395 1178 6297448+ b Win95 FAT32 /dev/hda6 1179 1701 4200966 b Win95 FAT32 /dev/hda7 1702 2486 6305481 83 Linux native /dev/hda8 2486 3010 6618748+ 83 Linux native Do those figures look right to you?
I got exactly the same problem. I tried several ways to bring it to work, but they all failed. The hard disk is a IBM DPTA 20.5GB. The Mainboard was a Asus P5A. I get the same error messages, even if I append kernel options like "linear" or "hda=..." for the geometry of the disk. A computer with the same disk and a Asus P3BF showed the same behaviour. On a MSI Board with Athlon and this hard disk, I got it without any options to work. (Yes, I tried to install 3 Linux-Windows machines) I searched for differences in addressing or other Bios options, but I found none. Even more curious is the fact, that when I put a hard disk, where it didn4t work in a the computer that runs, the error messages are still there. I don4t believe that both hard disks are defect. I did some experiments and Linux-fdisk fails whenever I try to partition more then about 8GB. If I make the partitions with windows-fdisk, Linux-fdisk can4t read the partition table if there are partitions above 8GB. This limit sounds like a known problem, but even after reading the Large-Disk-Howto and some experiments with kernel options, I found no way to fix the problem.
sorry, I found the problem. The jumpers of the hard disk were incorrectly set. Perhaps the above problem is the same. Look for the settings of the jumpers for the number of heads and sectors. Now the installation was no problem.
assigned to jbj