Bug 77772 – ks fails to dedect lba

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Bug 77772 - ks fails to dedect lba

Summary:	ks fails to dedect lba

Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX

Aliases:	None

Product:	Red Hat Linux
Classification:	Retired
Component:	anaconda (Show other bugs)
Sub Component:
Version:	8.0
Hardware:	i386 Linux

Priority	medium Severity medium
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Assigned To:	Jeremy Katz
QA Contact:	Mike McLean
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Reported:	2002-11-13 08:10 EST by Gerald Teschl
Modified:	2007-04-18 12:48 EDT (History)
CC List:	0 users

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Fixed In Version:
Doc Type:	Bug Fix
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Last Closed:	2003-01-03 00:24:29 EST
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Description Gerald Teschl 2002-11-13 08:10:57 EST

I use ks and lilo (since grub does not work for us):

# bootloader
bootloader --location mbr --useLilo

However, anaconda always writes "linear" instead of "lba32" to
lilo.conf. Moreover, lilo detects that "linear" is nonsense and
fails to install. However, anaconda seems to completely ingore
these errors and finishes "normally" leaving a system without
bootmanager.

Comment 1 Jeremy Katz 2002-11-14 19:06:00 EST

What is the output of lilo with linear in the config file?  Unfortunately, lba32
can't always be reliably detected (hence why there's the forcelba option)

Comment 2 Gerald Teschl 2002-11-16 11:19:29 EST

The lilo output is:

Fatal: sector 68686864 too large for linear mode (try 'lba32' instead)

and should be easy to dedect;-)

Comment 3 Jeremy Katz 2002-11-26 17:13:00 EST

Right, but that doesn't mean that lba32 will work.  Does it actually boot if you
change it to lba32?  Also, what is the output of the following run as root with
the booty package installed?

PYTHONPATH=/usr/lib/booty/ python  -c "import edd;print edd.detect()"

Comment 4 Gerald Teschl 2002-11-27 11:54:24 EST

Sure, but since you can't even install the boot loader with linear, what
can you loose;-)

Yes lba32 does work (this is brand new hardware with a 40G hard drive).

The output is "0".

Comment 5 Jeremy Katz 2002-12-11 17:42:38 EST

(also, note that you can force lba32 with --lba32 on your boot loader line... 
but on new hardware, it really should be detected properly)

Comment 6 Jeremy Katz 2003-01-03 00:24:29 EST

It looks like the edd detection code is segfaulting on most of my machines (it
works on the thinkpad, but that's it).  The best way to get working LBA32 is
going to be to either a) explicitly specify that you need it in kickstart or b)
use grub which will detect if you can use lba32 at boot time and thus not be
constrained by the kernel trying to keep people from hacking systems via the
vm86 stuff.

Comment 7 Gerald Teschl 2003-01-03 04:28:02 EST

I understand, that this is low priority for you, but if
lilo dedects that linear is wrong and lba32 should be used,
then where is the problem. Parsing the output for the above
error if lilo fails and trying again with lba32 instead
should be straight forward.

As I already mentioned, grub does not work for us. We absolutely
need "lilo -R" and as long as grub does not offer the equivalent,
it is no option for us.

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