[3745] in linux-scsi channel archive
Re: 2068 sectors
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jeff Collins)
Wed Apr 22 16:39:59 1998
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 1998 13:36:17 -0700 (PDT)
From: Jeff Collins <collinsj@ece.ucdavis.edu>
To: kernel@box.whiting.co.uk
cc: linux-scsi@vger.rutgers.edu
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.96.980417002756.12913A-100000@box.whiting.co.uk>
On Fri, 17 Apr 1998 kernel@box.whiting.co.uk wrote:
> i have an old microplis 9gig scsi drive
> which has 2068 sectors (or so it says on the drive).
>
> problem is the kernel just doesnt like it.
>
> Any suggestions on what to do ?
Yes. I had the same problem with an OEM HP disk that I got at a going out
of business sale. It had a 520 byte sector size. Unfortunately, under
linux, only powers of 2 are supported sector sizes (512, 1024, 2048). I
briefly considered hacking some kernel code to get around this, but after
talking with Leonard Zubkoff and a few others, I decided against it.
I tried various things like low level formatting it, low level formatting
it from my HPUX unix workstation, etc. trying to get it to change the
sector size to the more standard 512. The solution that finally worked
for me (and I think it was Leonard who suggested it) was to use a linux
tool called scsiinfo to change the sector size to 512 (2048 in your case)
and then do an immediate low level format. Unfortunately, in order to do
this, I first had to hack the kernel source in a minor way so that it
would not try to delete the disk entry. On my system, this caused either
kernel panics or at least flaky behavior anyway, but if the kernel deletes
the disk entry, then scsiinfo cannot see the disk to tweak on it. I could
probably scare up the exact patch if you need it, but basically, just find
sd.c under drivers/scsi I believe and comment out the "suchandsuch=0" that
immediately follows the "scsi: deleting disk entry" message.
> sdd : unsupported sector size 2068.
> scsi : deleting disk entry.
The scsiinfo distribution is scsiinfo-1.7.tar.gz. It's probably on
sunsite someplace, but archie reports it's available at
Host ftp.bme.hu
Location: /pub/OS/Linux/tsx-11/ALPHA/scsi
FILE -rwxrw-r-x 64742 Aug 24 1997 scsiinfo-1.7.tar.gz
I had trouble compiling it under redhat5, but it was ok under redhat4.2.
I have a compiled version sitting around if you need it. Good luck! --jw
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Jeff Collins, collinsj@ece.ucdavis.edu, Computer Engineering Research Lab
Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of California, Davis
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