OK, I'm *not* dual booting. Just FC2. Whatever they've done with the 2.6 geometry code detection/translation/hashings has FUBAR'd this puppy beyond use. Apprently this issue isn't being seen by users of the current 2.6 kernel. This looks to have been fixed months ago and didn't make it into FC2 - yet. See article at the end here for details. Or I'm just not seeing what I think I'm finding... (wouldn't be the first time)
P-III 500 - 1999 BIOS - 2 Hard drives, 10GB and 80GB. /dev/hda is 10GB drive and is dedicated to/boot and swap - nothing else. /dev/hdb is 80GB and has everything else on it.
Brand new FC2 install, grub is installed to MBR on hda. On boot all I get is a grub shell. Tossed a few geo commands to see what's going on:
grub>geometry (hd0)
drive 0x80: C/H/S = 512/32/63, The number of sectors = 1032192, LBA
Partition num : 0, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num : 1,
Error 18: Selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS
After a moment of WTF?? I check the BIOS settings. Sure enough - they're now set to: 512/32/63. Something is setting the BIOS back to values that don't make any sense. So, I re-detect the drive, save the correct geometry into BIOS and boot again. Same results.
::SIGH::
Try again, but this time feeding grub the correct geometry.
grub> geometry (hd0) 1024 768 63
Same exact dang-blasted frustrating result.
Just to be sure I wasen't be'n prank'd, pulled the GPG key from fedora.redhat.com - again, re-verified that the md5sums I have are legit. Re-verified the iso md5s - even did the mediacheck after burning - twice - all OK. It just flat out dosen't work with large drives on an older BIOS.
FWIW - this same hardware was working perfectly under FC1 - 2.4 kernel yum'd to latest. I'm fairly sure it'll be running correctly again soon, after another 2 (plus)hours of re-install to FC1.
I'm amazed this was released as anything but an alpha test. I mean, I know we're the 'development' lab-rats for Redhat - but come on. Most labs at least feed and water their test subjects - maybe even a T-shirt, or some cedar shreddings...
Here's an article (google cache) that describes what appears to be this same problem and the fix for it that was submitted to the kernel devel folks some time ago.
Looks like I'm off to find a BIOS update and hope against hope this'll work - but I'm not holding my breath. May well be the days of using older hardware are goners???
Mmm, first though - going to move what's on the 10GB drive to an old 3.2 - apprenlty it's within the BIOS limitations - see what happens....
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OK, I'm *not* dual booting. Just FC2. Whatever they've done with the 2.6 geometry code detection/translation/hashings has FUBAR'd this puppy beyond use. Apprently this issue isn't being seen by users of the current 2.6 kernel. This looks to have been fixed months ago and didn't make it into FC2 - yet. See article at the end here for details. Or I'm just not seeing what I think I'm finding... (wouldn't be the first time)
/dev/hda is 10GB drive and is dedicated to /boot and swap - nothing else.
/dev/hdb is 80GB and has everything else on it.
::SIGH::
P-III 500 - 1999 BIOS - 2 Hard drives, 10GB and 80GB.
Brand new FC2 install, grub is installed to MBR on hda. On boot all I get is a grub shell. Tossed a few geo commands to see what's going on:
grub>geometry (hd0)
drive 0x80: C/H/S = 512/32/63, The number of sectors = 1032192, LBA
Partition num : 0, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num : 1,
Error 18: Selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS
After a moment of WTF?? I check the BIOS settings. Sure enough - they're now set to: 512/32/63. Something is setting the BIOS back to values that don't make any sense. So, I re-detect the drive, save the correct geometry into BIOS and boot again. Same results.
Try again, but this time feeding grub the correct geometry.
grub> geometry (hd0) 1024 768 63
Same exact dang-blasted frustrating result.
Just to be sure I wasen't be'n prank'd, pulled the GPG key from fedora.redhat.com - again, re-verified that the md5sums I have are legit. Re-verified the iso md5s - even did the mediacheck after burning - twice - all OK. It just flat out dosen't work with large drives on an older BIOS.
FWIW - this same hardware was working perfectly under FC1 - 2.4 kernel yum'd to latest. I'm fairly sure it'll be running correctly again soon, after another 2 (plus)hours of re-install to FC1.
I'm amazed this was released as anything but an alpha test. I mean, I know we're the 'development' lab-rats for Redhat - but come on. Most labs at least feed and water their test subjects - maybe even a T-shirt, or some cedar shreddings...
Here's an article (google cache) that describes what appears to be this same problem and the fix for it that was submitted to the kernel devel folks some time ago.
Looks like I'm off to find a BIOS update and hope against hope this'll work - but I'm not holding my breath. May well be the days of using older hardware are goners??? Mmm, first though - going to move what's on the 10GB drive to an old 3.2 - apprenlty it's within the BIOS limitations - see what happens....