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Xref: sserve comp.unix.bsd:5704 comp.os.linux:11028 Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!uunet!mcsun!uknet!doc.ic.ac.uk!ajt From: ajt@doc.ic.ac.uk (Tony Travis) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd,comp.os.linux Subject: Problems reading partition table in 386bsd Message-ID: <1a2o7mINNah3@frigate.doc.ic.ac.uk> Date: 26 Sep 92 22:29:10 GMT Reply-To: ajt@rri.sari.ac.uk Organization: Dept. of Computing, Imperial College, University of London, UK. Lines: 30 NNTP-Posting-Host: swan.doc.ic.ac.uk X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6] I've just re-installed 386bsd onto a 100Mb Quantum IDE drive on my Elonex PC-320X (20MHz 386SX with 4Mb RAM) from the distribution floppies and I noticed that, occasionally, 386bsd fails to read the partition table correctly and reports that the 'b' partition overlaps the 'a' partition so refuses to use it as a swap area. I've checked using "disklabel wd0" and the 'b' partition appears to start at cylinder 0 in the kernel's copy, when the error is reported. But re-reading the label with '-r' shows that the label is intact on the disk. I suspect that this may have been the cause of the poor response I observed from shell commands in the foreground whilst compiling the GENERICISA kernel in the background. With only 4Mb of memory and no swap space it is likely that my foreground processes blocked. As far as I am aware, this problem only occurs at boot-time and repeatedly re-reading the label with "disklabel -r wd0" worked correctly every time. The remarks I made about the relative performance of Linux and 386bsd on comp.os.linux were honest, but inaccurate. Bill Jolitz was right not to believe me and I apologise for misleading everyone. Tony. -- Dr. A.J.Travis, | Tony Travis Rowett Research Institute, | JANET: <ajt@uk.ac.sari.rri> Greenburn Road, Bucksburn, | other: <ajt@rri.sari.ac.uk> Aberdeen, AB2 9SB. UK. | phone: 0224-712751