ATA 4 KiB sector issues.
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From: Gene Heskett on 11 Mar 2010 11:30 On Thursday 11 March 2010, tytso(a)mit.edu wrote: >On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 08:35:26PM +0530, Nikanth Karthikesan wrote: >> The real problem, here is just that partitioning-tools should create >> partitions that can work with both XP as well as Windows7. May be distro >> installers, should ask the user which compatibility he needs. > >4k aligned sectors will *work* with Windows XP, will it not? It's >just simply a matter of Windows XP, being really ancient, doesn't >create properly alligned partitions by default. > >And how often are we going to see Windows XP systems with these new 4k >physical sector drives anyway, where the first OS to touch the >partition is Windows XP? And in the case where this does happy, the >resulting partition will be result in terribly performance for Windows >XP as well as Linux. > >What's the specific scenario which you are trying to solve, and how >likely is it to occur in real life? And potentially one more question from a list lurker, Ted. Where are the tools that allow us to check and/or adjust that? I ask since I have 3 of these terrabyte drives in this box now and have no clue how to either check to see if we're off, or how to fix it if it is. And I have called my self following this discussion without noting if the tools have been specifically named. Thanks -- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Authors are easy to get on with -- if you're fond of children. -- Michael Joseph, "Observer" -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo(a)vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
From: H. Peter Anvin on 11 Mar 2010 11:40 On 03/11/2010 05:57 AM, Nikanth Karthikesan wrote: > > I guess, what he meant was, to keep filesystem blocks aligned, even if the > partition is not. Say if the partition is mis-aligned by 512-bytes, let the > filesystem waste 4k-512bytes and keep it's blocks aligned. But it might be a > case of over-engineering, possibly requiring disk format change. > That's basically what you end up having to do for FAT filesystems to be aligned. -hpa -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo(a)vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
From: Greg Freemyer on 11 Mar 2010 11:40 On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 10:25 AM, <tytso(a)mit.edu> wrote: > On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 08:35:26PM +0530, Nikanth Karthikesan wrote: >> The real problem, here is just that partitioning-tools should create >> partitions that can work with both XP as well as Windows7. May be distro >> installers, should ask the user which compatibility he needs. > > 4k aligned sectors will *work* with Windows XP, will it not? �It's > just simply a matter of Windows XP, being really ancient, doesn't > create properly alligned partitions by default. > > And how often are we going to see Windows XP systems with these new 4k > physical sector drives anyway, where the first OS to touch the > partition is Windows XP? �And in the case where this does happy, the > resulting partition will be result in terribly performance for Windows > XP as well as Linux. > > What's the specific scenario which you are trying to solve, and how > likely is it to occur in real life? > > � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �- Ted Ted, Apparently the real issue is Win2K, not XP. It seems to require the boot partition and possibly all partitions start on a cylinder boundary. And may have 255/63 hard-coded in to define what a cylinder is. I agree with the apparent consensus that a 2010 era linux partitioner does not need to be Win2K compatible. If someone wants to install Win2K they will need to either use an older generation partitioner to create the partitions or use specific command-line args to force a non-optimal alignment. I do think the linux partitioners should provide a way to force a cylinder alignment. Tejun, I would like to see your doc describe how to force a win2k compatible partition layout. fyi: The same issue apparently also exists for users still running OS/2. Greg -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo(a)vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
From: Christoph Hellwig on 11 Mar 2010 13:30 On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 11:01:41AM -0500, Mike Snitzer wrote: > mkp in particular, Jens, James, myself, and others implemented and > refined the SCSI and block changes. kzak, jim meyering, hans de > goede, hch, eric sandeen, bob peterson, myself and others updated all > other I/O stack layers ranging from DM to LVM, libblkid, fdisk, parted > to anaconda to mkfs.ext[234], mkfs.xfs, mkfs.gfs2 to virt-io and qemu. > FYI, all of these advances will be in Fedora 13 (quite a few are > already in Fedora 12). I also have some older patches for btrfs that I need to get back out to the list. There was some talk of major changes to the organization of the tools so I held it back for a while longer. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo(a)vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
From: Tejun Heo on 11 Mar 2010 20:20
Hello, On 03/12/2010 01:34 AM, Greg Freemyer wrote: > I do think the linux partitioners should provide a way to force a > cylinder alignment. Tejun, I would like to see your doc describe how > to force a win2k compatible partition layout. I suppose I can play with fdisk and list it as an example but if anyone knows better/proper way to force certain partitions to legacy alignment while leaving others properly aligned, I'll be happy to include it. Thanks. -- tejun -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo(a)vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/ |