From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.76 [en] (X11; U; SunOS 5.6 sun4u) Description of problem: The install kernel incorrectly detects an OnTrack style partition table on a normally partitioned disk (albeit with a large geometry -- CHS=148945/16/63). As a result, an OnTrack style partition table is getting written to the disk during the install, thus making the other partitions on that disk (which contain user data and are not otherwise touched by the install) invalid and impossible to recover. I will attach snippets from dmesg to detail what I'm seeing at the conclusion of this report. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install RH 7.1 on a host with a (I suspect) large enough disk. The 7.1 install kernel will write a normal partition table to the disk. 2. Boot the RH 7.2 install disk on the node. It will incorrectly determine that the geometry of the disk, and attempt to interpret an OnTrack partition table on the disk with a translated geometry. 3. Actual Results: In our case, the disk was detected with an incorrect partition table, and a translated geometry, thus rendering the existing data partition on that disk unreadable. Moreover, when the install completes, it formats the first partition as the /boot filesystem (which is what it should be doing). In this case, though, the incorrect first partition overlays the initial sectors of the correct extended partition, ruining the filesystem there. Expected Results: The right partition table should have been detected, and there should be no translated geometry. Additional info: This is what I'm seeing when I boot a slightly hacked (for output purposes) 2.4.9-31 kernel on a RH 7.2 box (with the first disk, hde, already munged by the installer): hde: 150136560 sectors (76870 MB) w/1916KiB Cache, CHS=148945/16/63 hdf: 150136560 sectors (76870 MB) w/1916KiB Cache, CHS=148945/16/63 hdg: 150136560 sectors (76870 MB) w/1916KiB Cache, CHS=148945/16/63 hdh: 150136560 sectors (76870 MB) w/1916KiB Cache, CHS=148945/16/63 hdc: set_drive_speed_status: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error } hdc: set_drive_speed_status: error=0xb4 hdc: ATAPI 40X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache, DMA Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12 Partition check: hde: {PTBL - heads=255} {remap #3} [PTBL] [9345/255/63] hde1 hde2 hde3 hde4 hdf: {PTBL - heads=16} hdf1 hdg: {PTBL - heads=16} hdg1 hdg2 hdg3 hdh: {PTBL - heads=16} hdh1 The first part between curly braces is in msdos_partition(), after it has attempted to determine the number of heads by reading the existing partition table. In later kernels, this section of code is moved to handle_ide_mess(). I see similar output from dmesg on the install kernel, before anything is written to the disk. The second part is in ide_xlate_1024(), where I put in a '{remap #n}' wherever ret is set to something nonzero. This is what I see whenI boot the same kernel on an identically configured (hardware-wise) RH 7.1 machine: hde: 150136560 sectors (76870 MB) w/1916KiB Cache, CHS=148945/16/63 hdf: 150136560 sectors (76870 MB) w/1916KiB Cache, CHS=148945/16/63 hdg: 150136560 sectors (76870 MB) w/1916KiB Cache, CHS=148945/16/63 hdh: 150136560 sectors (76870 MB) w/1916KiB Cache, CHS=148945/16/63 hdc: set_drive_speed_status: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error } hdc: set_drive_speed_status: error=0xb4 hdc: ATAPI 40X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache, DMA Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12 Partition check: hde: {PTBL - heads=16} hde1 hde2 < hde5 > hdf: {PTBL - heads=16} hdf1 hdg: {PTBL - heads=16} hdg1 hdg2 < hdg5 hdg6 > hdh: {PTBL - heads=16} hdh1 Note: I am aware of the different partition table on hdg. This is a result of an intentional repartitioning of hdg on the RH 7.2 install. There is no other repartitioning done in my install.
I forgot to mention this before, but I am booting with the latest install image.
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