Re: Error booting diag partition on T42 laptop

[G. Vincent Castellano]

Thanks for a prompt reply.  I'll need some clarification on some of your points, 
though it sounds to me like this is going to be too much work to fix.

Peter Jones wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-10-05 at 09:24 -0400, G. Vincent Castellano wrote:
>
> > I have an IBM T42 laptop which includes a diagnostics/restore partition and I
> > want to be able to boot this from Grub, as well as the XP and RedHat partitions.
> >
> > I started out by booting from a RedHat install CD, deleted the Windows XP 
> > partition, and added  Linux Swap and ext2 filesystems, then I was able to use 
> > the diag/recovery partition to restore XP to the space remaining.  I can boot 
> > into XP and RedHat no problem, but not to the Diag partition.
>
> This happens because the kernel brokenly disables the Host Protected
> Area, and during some OS installation you've wiped the MBR and written a
> new one with disk geometry read from the disk.

That would be the RedHat install.

> There's really no way to "undo"; the data is gone so you need to get it
> from IBM.  Even then, the same kernel bug plus the userland and
> installer's ignorance will probably bite you.

I had enough foresight to build myself a set of recovery CDs before I started 
this exercise so I can get back the original factory config.  But it doesn't 
sound like there is an easy way to achieve the desired result.

Maybe I will try the recovery CDs and see if they offer any options for the 
reinstallation, though I would be surprised if this were the case.

What if I decline to install grub from the RedHat CD and instead do it manually? 
 Would that afford any means of preserving the HPA?
--gvc

> I've got a patch for the kernel that I need to send upstream, which will
> make it so distribution installers can at least control if they reset
> HPA or not.  Unfortunately at this point we also need to do workarounds
> for peoples systems that have already been screwed up :/