Parted gets wrong geometry, hangs writing filesystem

[Peter Sherwood]

Summary of problem: Parted fails to recognize correct disk geometry, and
hangs while attempting
to write partition at what it thinks is the end of the disk.

Parted 1.4.11
Red Hat Linux 7.0
Award BIOS, v4.51PG, 10/1998
Disk: Maxtor IDE (60 GB), secondary master, reported by EZ-BIOS 11.0M
(1999) to be 7473/255/63. EZ-BIOS is a Maxtor product shipped with the disk.
 
Parted was run from a boot disk (created by downloading partboot-1.4.11.img
and copying onto a diskette)
and initially produced the following display (approximately):

Warning: Operating system thinks /dev/hdc is 4111/255/63...

[after "print"]

Disk geometry for /dev/hdc: 0.000-32253.539 megabytes
Minor  Start       End Type       Filesystem  Flags
1      0.031    23.532 primary    ext2        boot
2     23.533 32247.663 extended
5     23.563 31220.068 logical    ext2
6  31220.099 32247.663 logical    linux-swap

I then issued the command "rm 6", followed by "resize 2 23.533 61467.517"
(disk actual size is
61,467,517,440 bytes=7473x255x63x512). Parted said "Error: can't create
partition past end of disk".

Now I attempted to restore the swap partition by giving the command
"mkpartfs logical linux-swap 31220.099 32247.663".
Parted hangs with the disk activity light on. The partition was not
created, as is evident from the fdisk output below, which was done after
the problems with parted.

For what it's worth. I think this is a BIOS/Linux problem. The CMOS BIOS
setup auto IDE detection page shows 4111/255/63,and Red Hat's Disk Druid
showed this also. Disk Druid was told to use the entire remaining disk
space for #2, and it apparently thought 4111/255/63 was the size of the
disk. As you can see, fdisk gets the correct numbers.

I hope you can help with this, because right now I'm running Linux without
a swap partition, and that can't be good.

Further info:
address@hidden parted]# fdisk /dev/hdc -l
 
Disk /dev/hdc: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 7473 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes
 
   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdc1   *         1         3     24066   83  Linux
/dev/hdc2             4      4111  32997510    5  Extended
/dev/hdc5             4      3980  31945221   83  Linux
address@hidden parted]# fdisk /dev/hdc
 
The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 7473.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
   (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
 
Command (m for help): p
 
Disk /dev/hdc: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 7473 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes
 
   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdc1   *         1         3     24066   83  Linux
/dev/hdc2             4      4111  32997510    5  Extended
/dev/hdc5             4      3980  31945221   83  Linux
 
Command (m for help): x
 
Expert command (m for help): p
 
Disk /dev/hdc: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 7473 cylinders
 
Nr AF  Hd Sec  Cyl  Hd Sec  Cyl    Start     Size ID
 1 80   1   1    0 254  63    2       63    48132 83
 2 00   0   1    3 254  63 1023    48195 65995020 05
 3 00   0   0    0   0   0    0        0        0 00
 4 00   0   0    0   0   0    0        0        0 00
 5 00   1   1    3 254  63 1023       63 63890442 83
 
Expert command (m for help):
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Sherwood
(617) 244-0836
(617) 969-2101 (fax)
address@hidden
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