Re: Passing geometry to parted on a floppy

[Mike Oliver]

Andrew Clausen wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 17, 2003 at 01:56:54PM -0500, Mike Oliver wrote:
>> Hi, I did a quick archive search but didn't find the answer
>> to this.  The parted docs say that if the BIOS tells you
>> a different geometry than parted does, you should pass
>> the geometry to the Linux kernel.  But it doesn't explain
>> how to do that if you're booting parted from a floppy.
>> (There's no existing Linux on the machine in question --
>> the whole *reason* I'm using parted is to resize some vfat
>> partitions in order to install Linux.)
>>
>> Sorry for being clueless; thanks for any help.
> 
> Unless you have an old machine (>5 years?), you probably don't need
> to worry.  Try setting the LBA flag on your FAT partitions, and
> see if Windows breaks.

5 years is probably close to what it is.  It's a Pentium II MMX at
266 MHz (the machine is just a stopgap until I can buy a new
mobo/processor and rebuild my broken machine).

I don't know how to set the LBA flag.  Nothing in the parted
docs (version 1.2.11) tells me how to do this, and certainly
the FDISK with DOS 7.0 doesn't say anything about it.  (Remember
I don't have Linux fdisk available).  It's also not clear to
me what the test is supposed to show.  If my BIOS is too old
to support LBA then presumably it will just ignore the flag,
so it shouldn't break anything, right?

My linux install disks are Mandrake 8.1 (or maybe 8.2); I could try
DiskDrake, but does it safely resize FAT16/VFAT partitions?  Especially
if there's a question about whether Linux is reading the geometry
right?

Did I join the wrong mailing list?  I subscribed to bug-parted
but saw your reply only from the cc.

Thanks for your help,
Mike