Re: Fedora Core 2/Windows XP dual boot: selecting Linux doesn't work

Enrique Perez-Terron wrote:
> In the mean time, if you want to help us further, could you
> run the command
>
> strace -f -o /tmp/grub.strace /sbin/grub << EOF
> root (hd1,0)
> setup --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 --prefix=/grub (hd1,0)
> quit
> EOF

strace: command not found :(

> Now I need to judge the value 0x1b041 = 110657, or 56656384 bytes,
> unlikely to be beyond any 1024-cylinder limit. But is it the first
> sector of any file in /boot/grub?
>
> Could you try this?
>
> debugfs /dev/hdc1
> stat /grub/stage1

Inode: 11814 Type: regular Mode: 0644 Flags: 0x0 Generation:
3614209032
User: 0 Group: 0 Size: 512
File ACL: 0 Directory ACL: 0
Links: 1 Blockcount: 2
BLOCKS:
(0): 54785
TOTAL: 1

> stat /grub/e2fs_stage1_5

Inode: 11816 Generation: 3614209034
Size: 7616
Blockcount: 16
BLOCKS:
(0-7): 55809-55816
TOTAL: 8

> stat /grub/stage2

Inode: 11815 Generation: 3614209033
Size: 101800
Blockcount: 202
BLOCKS:
(0-11): 55297-55308, (IND): 55309, (12-99): 55310-55397
TOTAL: 101

So... no 110657 there.

> I would like to have the output of "fdisk -ul",

[...Info on /dev/hde...]

Disk /dev/hdc: 20.4 GB
16 heads, 63 sectors/head, 39566 cylinders, total 39882528 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdc1 * 63 204623 102280+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdc2 204624 38047967 18921672 83 Linux
/dev/hdc3 38047968 39882527 917280 82 Linux swap

> and even the output of
>
> echo "x
> d
> q" | fdisk /dev/hdc

Here I get a warning that the number of cylinders for this disk is set
to 39566, which is OK, but could in certain setups cause problems with
software running at boot time (e.g. old versions of LILO) or
booting/partitioning software from other OSs. Followed by a bunch of
hexadecimals, showing the contents of the disk. I'll see if I can
somehow copy-paste this.

> The only reason I know about that an area of a disk could be unaccessible
> (apart from hard errors) is the infamous cylinder 1024 limitation, but
> since, 1) your computer as a SATA disk -> it must be a recent (i.e. post
> 2002) computer, and should support extended int 13 Bios calls, and 2) you
> are having a separate /boot partition in /hdc1, I suppose you have given
> that partition the lowest-numbered sectors on the disk, then I can't
> imagine the 1024-cylinder thing could be an issue.

Yes, I bought this computer only last month. Should be fine, I guess.

> Does the Bios setup have a function to display the disk geometry?
> Linux' fdisk -ul also outputs disk geometry data, are there
> differences?

Hmmm... I can't find anything about the geometry in the Bios setup.
Perhaps I should look harder. I'll let you know if anything pops up.

--
Garmt de Vries.

.

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