Subject: zero-sized disks
To: None <tech-kern@netbsd.org>
From: der Mouse <mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
List: tech-kern
Date: 03/02/2005 13:57:14
I have an IDE disk which shows up with zero geometry values (zero
sectors/track, zero heads, zero cylinders). This produces a
divide-by-zero trap in the kernel at boot time when diskerr() tries to
work out the C/H/S location of an erroring block (which occurs when the
kernel tries to read the beginning of the disk to figure out the boot
device - this is on i386).
Now, this disk is obviously rather broken. But it seems to me that
panicking is not a correct response. What do you people think? Worth
a PR, or is this a sufficiently drastic hardware failure that it
doesn't really much matter what the kernel's reaction is?
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
X Against HTML mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B