grant@torque.net
Mon, 14 Sep 1998 09:26:08 -0400 (EDT)
> An update on my zip mounting problems.
> The disk is formated out of the box for pc (msdos).
>
> mount -t auto /dev/sda /mnt/zip returns:
> VFS: Can't find a valid MSDOS filesystem on dev 08:00
> mount: you specify the filesystem type.
This is certainly wrong - you should not be trying to mount /dev/sda.
> mount -t auto /dev/sda4 /mnt/zip returns:
> /dev/sda4 is not a valid block device
Are you sure this is still an "out of the box" disk ? I think the
driver has noticed that the partition is larger than the available
space on the disk and decided that the disk is scrambled.
> dd if=/dev/sda of=data.txt count=16:
> drive is accessed, and a file is created; file data.txt reports
> type 'data'.
That doesn't really tells us anything at all. If you were to
attach that data file, perhaps someone here could tell what had happened
to the partition table.
> fdisk /dev/sda and p returns:
> Disk /dev/sda: 64 heads, 32 sectors, 96 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 bytes
>
> Device Boot Begin Start End Blocks Id System
> /dev/sda4 1 1 2142 2193280 6 DOS 16-bit >=32M
Look at those numbers - the partition table is bogus. It looks
like you wrote some data over it.
> Partition 4 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
> phys=(0, 1, 1) logical=(0, 3, 1)
> Partition 4 has different physical/logical endings:
> phys=(15, 63, 32) logical=(2141, 58, 32)
More evidence of a corrupt partition table.
> If I use the same disk in win95, there are no problems.
Really ? If so, the win95 driver is ignoring the bogus partition table.
(But that doesn't surprise me.)
If you are prepared to risk the data on the disk, you could use
fdisk to delete partition 4, and recreate it with sensible values:
start cylinder 1 and end 96. Write back the partition table and
reload the ppa driver. Unless there's something more bizarre happening,
you should then have a valid partition table and still be able to
read and write the disk in both Win95 and Linux.
If you have your Ph.D. thesis on the disk, however, don't blame me
if you lose it !
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Grant R. Guenther grant@torque.net
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Wed 30 Dec 1998 - 10:18:18 EST