Kernel panic on new Debian 6.01 install

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Tue, Apr 05, 2011 at 06:59:33PM -0400, Thomas Milne wrote:
> Would that be reflected in the boot process? The reason I ask is that
> during boot, the BIOS detects a '500 GB' hd. Would it show that if the
> controllers were limited as you describe?

The BIOS may have such a limit and still show the right size of drive,
since the drive size read call hasn't changed, but the way to use that
capacity has.  You ask for disk size, and it returns a 32bit value.
But if you only have a 28bit disk interface to request blocks by LBA,
you can't use 32bits worth of sectors.  It was only when disks went over
2TB that they had to invent a new disk capacity read command that uses
a bigger number.  No one ever said PCs made sense. :)

Certainly a P3 machine is old enough that it very well could be limited
to LBA28.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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