Re: Disk Geometries reported incorrectly on 2.6.0-testX

From: Andries Brouwer (aebr_at_win.tue.nl)
Date: 11/30/03

  • Next message: Lenar Lõhmus: "Re: NForce2 pseudoscience stability testing (2.6.0-test11)"
    Date:	Sun, 30 Nov 2003 13:49:16 +0100
    To: "Norman Diamond" <ndiamond@wta.att.ne.jp>
    
    

    On Sun, Nov 30, 2003 at 04:08:22PM +0900, Norman Diamond wrote:
    > Andries Brouwer replied to Andrew Clausen:
    >
    > > I am happy with that description.
    > > "Disk geometry is: some numbers that your BIOS invents".
    >
    > I'm happy with that too. Now, since the Linux kernel has no fantasies about
    > disk geometry, it is fine to refuse to provide such non-existent fantasies
    > to user space. However, it remains necessary to provide the BIOS's
    > fantasies to user space. Sometimes user space does something (via the
    > kernel) that will later be interpreted by the BIOS. User space has to be
    > able to do it in the manner that the BIOS wants.

    The point is just that the Linux kernel has no idea about these BIOS fantasies.
    It may have a more or less elaborate system of guesses, but it has no
    knowledge. In practice things work better if the kernel never tries to
    tell anything to user space, and user space derives the desired BIOS fantasies
    from the partition table.

    > Anyway, regardless of which OS you're running, the OS isn't running until
    > it's running. The MBR depends on BIOS functions (e.g. the infamous INT13)
    > to read in the boot loader and the boot loader depends on BIOS functions to
    > read in the kernel. Yes Dr. Brouwer, I know you know this. The question is
    > why you think that commands such as parted don't have to know this?

    You invent a title for me that I never used.
    You invent an opinion for me that I never had.

    -
    To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
    the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
    More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
    Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/


  • Next message: Lenar Lõhmus: "Re: NForce2 pseudoscience stability testing (2.6.0-test11)"

    Relevant Pages

    • Re: [OT] ALSA userspace API complexity
      ... Why we have X servers in user space (and only some supporting code is in the kernel) then? ... Can you do this with ALSA way? ... comercial OSS have ALSA emulation and ALSA have OSS emulation. ...
      (Linux-Kernel)
    • Re: [Linux-fbdev-devel] Generic VESA framebuffer driver and Video card BOOT?
      ... >> kernel image or that the image is corrupt or that hardware diagnostics failed. ... Well being able to use this BIOS emulator logic to bring up the primary ... the same as Open Firmware really). ... Actually there is nothing wrong with the x86 BIOS from the perspective of ...
      (Linux-Kernel)
    • Re: Things that Longhorn seems to be doing right
      ... Updating a user space database every time ... >is just as bad as putting an SQL optimizer into the kernel. ... Well, since I don't think that SQL belongs in the filesystem, and I ...
      (Linux-Kernel)
    • Re: Grub
      ... But beware of what the bios exactly is!! ... It asks the disk ... Grub, for example, or Windows bootloader, or whatever... ... there is no kernel to provide access to them. ...
      (Fedora)
    • Re: syscalls implementation
      ... In user space, the system calls are stubs in a library that traps into ... the vector code generated from syscalls.master in the kernel. ... stack, and then a trap is issued by ... argument pointer are passed to the system call. ...
      (freebsd-hackers)