| sean finney on 26 Dec 2004 18:31:25 -0000 |
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hi jeff, On Sun, Dec 26, 2004 at 10:46:23AM -0500, Jeff Abrahamson wrote: > So imagine my surprise when I was obliged to update my BIOS in order > to fix a bug (related to a non-boot hard drive with capacity over 137 > GB). > > Clearly I was wrong on the BIOS question, but can anyone illuminate > any details? Does linux always use bios, just sometimes? Why? i think there are cases where the bios is still used on a running system. for example, as the kernel is scanning the available devices (which probably also involves getting some info from the bios), i believe it asks the bios for the disk geometry. being an older bios using an ATA/IDE disk, your bios can't probably address geometries greater than 28 bits, so your instead it truncates the apparent size. on most modern architectures this is worked around by using a larger address space, such as a 48-bit LBA, which in your case requires a bios upgrade. sean Attachment:
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