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From: nall@nu.cs.fsu.edu (John Nall)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Large disks
Message-ID: <223@vsserv.scri.fsu.edu>
Date: 29 Sep 89 11:34:00 GMT
Sender: news@vsserv.scri.fsu.edu
Reply-To: nall@nu.cs.fsu.edu (John Nall)
Organization: Florida State University
Lines: 29

I've been running Protected Mode Minix successfully on my 12-Mhz
AT-clone for some time.  The 40 mb hard disk has three partitions,
with the first one assigned to DOS, the second for /usr and the third
one for root.

Last night, I tried to move Minix to a new 25-Mhz 386 system, with a
80 MB harddisk.  From floppies, Minix (protected mode) runs fine.  But
when I try to do a mkfs /dev/hd2 30000 (for example) it immediately
craps out with a message something like:

     put_block failed
     input line was line 1

Experimenting, I can do mkfs /dev/hd2 n, where "n" is a much smaller
number.  For example, mkfs /dev/hd2 1000 works fine.  So it would
appear that I'm running up against a number that is too large for
someone (write? ) to handle.  Anyone have any experience with this?
I don't mind spending some time looking for the problem, but if someone
else has already solved it, I sure would appreciate knowing about it.

BTW, the disk is 9 heads, 1023 cylinders, 17 sectors per track, 512
bytes per sector.  at_wini appears to work fine with it, using andy's
suggested test of dd if=/dev/hd0 of=/dev/null count=1000.


======================================================================
John Nall                              Internet:  nall@nu.cs.fsu.edu
Computer Science Department            Florida State University
    "Today, a Moon Moth -- tomorrow, a Sea Dragon Conquerer!!"