Bugzilla – Bug 214992
Cannot install to partition > 15 on PATA
Last modified: 2006-11-27 15:35:31 UTC
I've run into this insanity elsewhere on SATA due to its absurd limit on partitions per physical device. Now in an attempted factory ftp install from mirrors.kernel.org using 20 Oct kernel and initrd I get these messages: Your disk /dev/sdc contains 24 partitions. The maximum number of partitions that the kernel driver of the disk can handle is 15. Partitions numbered above 15 cannot be accessed. Your disk /dev/sda contains 22 partitions. The maximum number of partitions that the kernel driver of the disk can handle is 15. Partitions numbered above 15 cannot be accessed. Attempting to proceed to the partitioning step caused the graphical installer to abort with exit code 139 on tty3, dumping me to the initial text installation menu. The i815/ICH2 system has neither SATA nor SCSI nor RAID nor connected USB devices. The only card devices are Matrox G400 AGP and Intel Pro100 PCI NIC. The installation target is /dev/hdc21, which has a previous factory install as /dev/hda21.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 58805 ***
Bug 58805 is private. Why? How does one discover or follow such a bug? Shouldn't this be left open and set to depend on the hidden bug so others won't need to be filing more duplicates? Is there some workaround so that people won't need to switch to Ubuntu? That bug is marked fixed. When was it fixed?
Bug 58805 is an rather old bug, I cannot make it public due to its permissions but I added you to it so that you can read it yourself. Basically: The amount of partitions per block device is hardcoded into the kernel, udev won't help in any way with it. So from a kernel point of view, this is WONTFIX. (CANTFIX to be more exact ...). But let me reopen this one.
Hannes, this is one of the "features" of going to libata.
FIXED seems to be an inappropriate resolution for bug 58805. Based on the way it was handled, either it isn't fixed (e.g. cantfix), or it was left assigned to the wrong component. If the kernel people have a public bug database with bug(s) on this subject it would be nice to refer to it here. Interested parties might then be able to discover when they can expect to be able to use their existing systems with new SUSE versions without a complete overhaul of their partitioning philosophies and backup strategies. This will be a recurring problem. Disks have gotten too big for the kernel's artificial partition count limitation.
You can always install when specifying 'brokenmodules=ata_piix' on the commandline. This will instruct the installer to omit the 'ata_piix' module (and hence the libata support) and installation will continue as normal. Reducing to normal as workaround is available. AJ, we should put this in the release notes / documentation somewhere.
Karl, please add something to the release notes.
10.2 will default to the 'classical' ide drivers. You can use 'hwprobe=modules.pata' to switch to the libata based variants. The code just didn't cover the piix vs. ata_piix case. I've fixed that now. With beta 2 things should be back to normal.
*** Bug 215766 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 216524 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Created attachment 103559 [details] patch for util-linux to enable partx If you have util-linux with attached patch installed, make sure no partition on sda is in use (swap/suspend/mounted), then # partx -d /dev/sda # kpartx -a /dev/sda Now /dev/sda[1-15] have vanished and /dev/disk/by-name/sda[1-255] appear instead. Mounting these devices works normally. Problem solved.
The partx/kpartx command sequence has to be included in the initrd to work reliably. But then you can even boot from such a disk. One bug in kpartx would need to be fixed for full compatibility: kpartx does not create mappings for extended partitions, but the in-kernel partitioning code does.
cthiel: Can you take a look at this feature while aj is away?
Andreas, can you please take care of the util-linux part? (enable partx)? Hannes, would it be possible to add this as an option to mkinitrd, so users who really need this, can enable it?
After talking to Hannes, we won't add this option to mkinitrd. Karl, let's put this into the release notes, as proposed in comment #8. Thanks!
Bug 218122 has my mkinitrd patch for this.
Comments are still too confusing to me. Please, provide a short text proposal and assign the bug to me.
Patch for util-linux submitted.
Thanks Matthias! Let's push this bug over to Karl now.
Hannes, could you please brief Karl on what needs to be put into the release notes?
Well, actually nothing. The default installation works as before. Only those who'd like to try the new PATA drivers can use the flag during installation. And then they should be aware that sda supports only 15 partitions. Not that you can create more than 15 partitions via YaST, but one should document it.
Because the problem obviously is fixed, it is not needed to add it to the RNs (see #22). Documenting the new PATA drivers is a documentation issue (FATE?).