F8 Anaconda - partition table unreadable

[Tony Nelson]

At 10:09 AM -0500 11/13/07, Rich Bishop wrote:
>Hello,
>
>Sorry for the double post. I managed to put the other one in the middle of
>an old thread.
>
>I'm trying to install Fedora 8 on a T42 thinkpad which is currently
>running FC6. I have a separate partition for /home which contains all of
>my data that needs to be preserved. After selecting the keyboard type
>the installer pops up a window saying "The partition table on device sda
>was unreadable. To create new partitions it must be initialized, causing
>the loss of ALL DATA on this drive". Well, I obviously don't want that,
>so I say no, and then I have no drives to install to on the next screen.
>
>Running fdisk -l /dev/sda in the shell on virtual console 2 shows
>partition information - but I've just noticed that the information
>appears to be wrong:
>
>
>Under Core 6: Drive is 60GB, 7296 cylinders
>Under F8: Drive is 56.4GB, 6859 cylinders
>
>
>The partitions look the same, but under F8 my last partition appears to
>hang off the end of the disk (as it ends on cylinder 7296).

HPA?  Changed in F7.  You might see "hpa" mentioned in FC6 dmesg log.
Perhaps adding "libata.ignore_hpa=1" to the boot params will help.

At 5:24 PM -0400 5/24/07, Jeremy Katz wrote:
 ...
>Magic added to anaconda to recognize and dtrt with libata.ignore_hpa=1
>as a command line flag.  Post F7, I'll make it generic for all modules
>and module options.


At 3:58 PM -0400 5/24/07, Jarod Wilson wrote:
 ...
>... You can put the following into /etc/modprobe.conf:
>
>options libata libata.ignore_hpa=1
>
>Then upgrade via yum. Sub-optimal for those who prefer to upgrade via
>anaconda, but its an option.
 ...

At 4:15 PM -0400 5/24/07, Jarod Wilson wrote:
 ...
>This link gives some data on how to use the setmax utility to nuke the
>hpa area on a drive, which you could do under FC6, and subsequently, an
>anaconda-based F7 upgrade should work fine:
>
>http://www.niiconsulting.com/checkmate/2006/09/hiding-data-with-hpahost-protected-area-in-linux/
 ...
-- 
____________________________________________________________________
TonyN.:'                       <mailto:tonynelson at georgeanelson.com>
      '                              <http://www.georgeanelson.com/>