On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 10:05:22PM +0200, Manuel Bouyer wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 03:59:05PM +0200, Bernd Ernesti wrote:
[..]
> > How can a ACPI kernel change the number of cylinders for a disk?
> > I tried to boot with the old kernel and even switching back to the old mb, but
> > nothing gave the 3 cyl back.
> 
> There is an ATA command to reserve some disk space for firmware use and hide
> it from the OS. I'd expect a power cycle to reset this, though.

Hmm, let me check my logs. I did some reboots and changed the boards.
The drive in question is always the same. I swapped it between the boards.

Apr, 16th, 21:00	- first boot with the new mb, (kernel #88, this is an non acpi kernel)
			- shutdown -p failed
			- power off
Apr, 16th, 21:50	- back to the old mb (kernel #88)
			- power off
Apr, 17th, 23:00	- changed drive again to the new mb, still same kernel #88
			- drive geometry changed
			- first error happend (unnoticed)
			- reboot (no power off)
Apr, 17th, 23:20	- new kernel with acpi support
			- shutdown -p worked
			- power off
Apr, 17th, 23:30	- back to the old mb and old kernel (#88)
			- noticed the changed drive geometry because of
			  the 'id not found' errors and that one partition
			  was missing.

Sorry for the noise about ACPI, it was caused by something else.
Which brings us back to what caused this error.

I used smartctl to check if there was an error, and the there is one:

  After command completion occurred, registers were:
  ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
  -- -- -- -- -- -- --
  10 51 01 70 55 1c 40  Error: IDNF 1 sectors at LBA = 0x001c5570 = 1856880

  Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
  CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC   Powered_Up_Time  Command/Feature_Name
  -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --  ----------------  --------------------
  25 00 01 70 55 1c 1d 00      00:18:27.050  READ DMA EXT
  35 00 04 60 b7 8b 16 00      00:18:27.050  WRITE DMA EXT
  35 00 04 e0 8b 8b 16 00      00:18:27.050  WRITE DMA EXT
  c6 00 10 00 00 00 00 00      00:18:27.050  SET MULTIPLE MODE
  ef 03 45 00 00 00 00 00      00:18:27.050  SET FEATURES [Set transfer mode]

But I can't say if thats the geometry change or later from the wd0: (id not found)
errors.

Bernd