Re: a (late) question concerning the CHS disaster ...

[Patrick J. LoPresti]

Sven Luther <address@hidden> writes:

> Hello,
> 
> I am trying to finally understand the CHS problems, especially in light of
> what got explained here : 
> 
>   http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=108594754632501&w=2
> 
> Not that i care all that much myself, because i use a sane partition
> table format :), but i wonder why we didn't use the method of
> getting the CHS data from the previously written partition table,
> which supposedly worked before ?

Read the rest of the thread.  For example:

  http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=21FSS-25V-1%40gated-at.bofh.it

Briefly, inferring stuff from the existing partition table does not
help for blank disks and is totally wrong for disks which have been
moved between machines.

I realize my view is contrarian, but I despise "smart" software.  I
can boot any system to DOS, use its rock-stupid fdisk, and always get
a partition table that actually works.  The same is not true for
Linux+parted, which is sad.  Granted, this is partly because the
required information is tricky to obtain from protected mode...  But
it is also because Parted is always guessing what I want instead of
letting me TELL it.

To my knowledge, there is still no way for me to tell Parted what
geometry to use.  Which is frustrating, because I (or rather, my code)
actually knows.

 - Pat