Re: Error 18 : Selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS

[Daniel Freedman]

On Sun, Dec 30, 2001, Yoshinori K. Okuji wrote:
> At Sun, 30 Dec 2001 01:26:51 -0500,
> Daniel Freedman wrote:
> > However, the really confusing or disturbing thing is that it sometimes
> > work perfectly fine and completely boots from this partition, yet
> > sometimes doesn't work and fails with the above message.  And, worse,
> > try as I might I can't find any type of reproducibility in it (the
> > only clue seems to be that I can seem to coerce grub to better
> > recognize this partition if I give it a 'geometry (hd0)' on the
> > command line beforehand).  Also, it's never worked from this partition
> > when automated from a menu, but can be made to work by entering the
> > exact same commands from the grub command line.  Seems strange to
> > me...
> 
> That's too strange, but that is perhaps because there is code that
> depends on something happening by chance (e.g. the timer, the layout
> of the stack...). The code may be in GRUB, or, may be in your BIOS.
> 
> Anyway, please try the latest version in the CVS first, as I have done
> a change which might be related to your problem right now.

Hi Okuji,

Wow!  This latest CVS (checked out only a few hours after my last) now
works perfectly, and reproducibly so, at least in my configuration.
Just out of curiosity, were you fixing this before my bug-report or
did that trigger something?  And I guess it ended up being some form
of timer issue in GRUB?  Though it doesn't now effect me, just for my
future info, should GRUB be able to boot from a partition located at
any location on the drive (ie 40GB, 60GB high, etc.) assuming correct
(LBA) BIOS information?

Anyway, thanks so very much for your help, especially so quickly on a
late Saturday night near the holidays.  Once again, Free Software
delivers!

Take care and best wishes for a happy and healthy New Year,

Daniel

-- 
Daniel A. Freedman
Laboratory for Atomic and Solid State Physics
Department of Physics
Cornell University