On Mon, 2004-12-06 at 02:42, Chad Perrin wrote:
> I'd only heard of those specific "bugs" to which I vaguely referred
> being associated with Fedora. There are many others I'd heard of being
> assocaited with other distributions.
> The fact that I only heard that about Fedora Core 2, by the way, is
> probably based on the facts that Fedora is extremely popular and that
> particular problem was a major critical failure for a lot of people.
The "bug" is with select BIOSes, not Linux 2.6 or GNU parted. The fact
that Linus & co. and the GNU parted team decided to stop trying to have
the Linux kernel "assume" LBA geometry and go on the actual
_specification_ is what instigated the issue anew. The "bug" affects
_any_ distro installer that uses the combination. No matter how many
times people stated it was affecting _all_ distro installers using the
kernel 2.6 / GNU parted combination, people kept calling it a "Fedora
bug."
Furthermore, if you had such a buggy BIOS and tried to dual-boot a DOS
version of Windows, you'd have the same issues. That's because
DOS-based Windows _must_ match the BIOS geometry, NT does not. Adding
to the issues is the popularity of 33GB+ drives, compared to just a few
years ago. Heck, even different version of NT dual-booting on the same
system could conflict. It's really a larger issue with the legacy,
"basic disk" that doesn't offer a means to store the assumed geometry of
an OS.
> The two things combined to turn the whole deal into a pretty
> well-traveled complaint. That doesn't mean that people aren't also
> constantly complaining about "bugs" they associate with other distributions.
The problem is this bug affects Fedora Core 2+, Mandrake Linux 10.0+ and
SuSE Linux 9.1+ because it's not a "distro bug," but a combination of
specific implementations of software. Furthermore, the root cause isn't
the combination, but the rare systems with the buggy BIOSes. This
combination was just the first to expose it.
Linux 2.4 "guesses" what the geometry is. This is typically done by
trying 255/63 heads/sectors, the typically LBA assumption by NT. Linux
2.6 / GNU Parted follows the spec -- too closely. And now all those
buggy BIOSes are no longer accommodated.
-- Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith@ieee.org ------------------------------------------------------------------ Beware of advocates who justify their preference not in terms of what they like about their "choice," but what they did not like about another option. Such advocacy is more hurtful than helpful.----------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided as an unmoderated internet service by Networked Knowledge Systems (NKS). Views and opinions expressed in messages posted are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of NKS or any of its employees.
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