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[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

My 3GB drive is still working find with BL2 and BL3 (except that I had to 
fix a timeout problem by disabling UDMA in BIOS for hdb).

We found a box of scsi drives and cables and have a scsi card.
They need terminating to boot and be recognized.
The first internal drive (Quantum) looks corroded.  The DOS Adaptect scsi 
utility did not even detect it and linux found it but said it was not 
responding (it would not spin).  It came set by default to terminated and 
0,0,0 but the four pairs of pins can be jumpered to any ID and 
unterminated.

Next I tried the external drive, which I think is not terminated but I 
plugged the zip drive into it and set it as terminated.
DOS and linux both recognize the drive, ID 4 (though the case is marked ID 
3 - someone probably changed a jumper inside the case at some point).
With the DOS Adaptec SCSI utility I tested the drive integrity and at 97% 
of 2GB it found one defective spot that it fixed.

Linux finds the drive but the scsi module (aic7xxx) told me:
READ CAPACITY FAILED  Unable to read partition table.


So I assumed someone had low-level formatted the drive without then 
partitioning it, and I tried to partition it with cfdisk:
FATAL ERROR:  Bad signature on partition table.
A lot of web research revealed that cfdisk cannot handle a drive that has 
not already been partitioned to start with.  Maybe someone used the scsi 
utility to low-level format the drive.

I discovered that, even without a DOS aspi*.sys driver (my aspi8dos.sys 
for the other scsi card did not seem to work with this one), DOS PQmagic 
found it as drive 3 and I am currently formatting it as primary, ext2.
We probably used PQM on the other drive which cfdisk won't handle.

Is there some linux tool for BLs that will work with never-partitioned 
drives with no file system on them yet, and with my IDE drive that was 
partitioned already, and formatted, and working with linux?

There was one webpage saying a distribution would lose new users if they 
used cfdisk and someone had an unpartitioned new disk and got a FATAL 
ERROR.

I reread my old postings on this subject and partitioned with PQMagic Now 
after insmodding the scsi controller module, I still get READ CAPACITY 
FAILED Unable to read partition table, but cfdisk works (it shows an 
ext2 partition) and I am running mke2fs.

Would first running DOS fdisk (after a low-level format) have made cfdisk 
work?


On Sat, 5 Nov 2005, sindi keesan wrote:

> On Wed, 2 Nov 2005, David Moberg wrote:
>
> > On 11/2/05, sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org> wrote:
> > > I have a hard drive that is running BL3 and BL2 perfectly.
> > > But when I try to run fdisk with either one (cfdisk) to look at the
> > > partition information with 'p' (print):
> > >
> > > FATAL ERROR:  Bad signature on partition table
> >
> > You had this same problem in February of this year. I
> > suggested 'cfdisk -z' to ignore the partition table, but you
> > said that the hard drive was bad (I'm not sure if this is the
> > same drive).

> > David

> I looked this up with google and found my problem again.  It is probably
> the same hard drive - 3GB but sometimes it looks like 1.2GB.  I just tried
> 'cfdisk -z' on the 200MB BL3 partition and instead of 'FATAL ERROR' it
> tells me I have FS Type 'Free Space' 206.44 MB.' For the 1.5GB BL2
> partition, it is 1498MB of 'Free Space'.  Is this what I should expect
> with the -z' option?  Maybe this is one of the drives where we removed (by
> reformatting) a Dynamic Drive Overlay or EZ-Drive.
>
> If I try the -c -s -f options (override kernel's values) it tells me I
> have illegal values.
>
> As long as I don't use cfdisk, everything works fine.  We must have
> partitioned this with PQ Magic.

Which gave me the idea to try PQM on this scsi disk.  I might try putting 
a bootable (lilo) linux on here that I can carry between scsi computers.

David gave instructions elsewhere - SW71 zimage.s kernel, plus lilo.  Set 
BIOS to boot from SCSI first, and also in the SCSI utility set it to boot 
from a removable device.

Could I remake the 2-floppy BL3 lilo set with a scsi kernel that I 
compiled small enough, and install that to scsi hard drive?

The kernel I compiled has scsi support only as a module.  I would need a 
new kernel even after installing to HD, with scsi_mod and sd_mod built in, 
but could use the zimage.s from SW71 for a while.

2.2.26 kernel config:  CONFIG_SCSI is not set

It would be easier not to compile a scsi kernel just now.

Please remind me how to switch over BL2 to lilo boot, assuming 
root=/dev/sda and all files are on the same drive.  I need to get SW71 
lilo to start with.

If this external scsi experiment works, I can use the internal 9GB scsi 
drive for linux with the same kernel, with or without lilo (assuming it 
spins up).

If more people had SCSI cards I could have a very portable linux that 
should run a lot faster than on a zip drive.  Some day I will learn to 
make a BL boot CD that boots a lot faster than DSL or a 'Live CD' 
slackware and has my favorite programs on it.


Sindi