CHS / LBA uncertainty

[Thomas Roelz]

Hello,

according to the parted documentation Linux/parted cannot safely
determine if a device is used in CHS or LBA mode. Therefore parted
usually prints a message like this on startup:

   Warning: The operating system thinks the geometry on /dev/sda
   is 1115/255/63. Therefore, cylinder 1024 ends at 8032.499M.
   You should check that this matches the BIOS geometry before
   using this program.                                    

This means that it is dangerous to use parted in a "naive" way
ignoring this message because a wrongly detected disk geometry
could have fatal consequences if the disk is altered with this.

So my question is:
Why are the *fdisk programs able to do their job in a safe way
without such a warning message (never heard of problems here)? 

Tom

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