BIOS booting from disks > 2TB

[borjam at sarenet.es]

El 20.11.2014 17:10, John Baldwin escribió:
>> So, that 0xffffffff might be a buffer overflow being triggered by a 
>> failed attempt to read the backup GPT table?
> 
> No.  Anytime the early boot stage doesn't like the drive the loader 
> ends up
> using a device number of -1.  It's not really an overflow, but an error
> indicator.

Oh, sorry. Understood.

>> Let's assume that the BIOS is poorly implemented and it won't read 
>> beyond the 2 TB limit.
> 
> That would be really odd since EDD has existed and supported 64-bit 
> LBAs since
> 1995.

Don't underestimate the terrific capability for surrealism of some 
peecee makers... ;)

>> As far as  I know, booting from a MBR disk doesn't require reading 
>> anything but the "classic" partition table and the partition we
>> are using. So, as long as the partition fits inside that 2 TB limit it 
>> should work, and it does.
> 
> Booting requires reading files like /boot/loader which can be anywhere 
> on the
> disk.  However, MBR partitions are limited to 32-bit LBAs, so your 
> filesystem
> is similarly limited.

As a matter of fact, I tried creating a MBR partition table and it 
worked. It just fails
with the GPT.

>> Booting from GPT, however, requires reading the end of the disk. Or is 
>> the backup copy of the partition table read if and only if
>> there's some problem with the main one?
> 
> Booting requires more than reading tables, it requires reading files 
> and those
> can be anywhere.

Yes, I understand they can be anywhere of course.

> 
>> Can BIOS be reporting a wrong size for the disk (after all we are 
>> assuming a dodgy BIOS) and making gptboot to cosider the
>> table corrupt, hence causing it to try to read the backup copy?
>> 
>> Whatever, that 0xffffffff parameter (which should be something like 
>> 0x80) looks like a corrupted variable to me, which would mean
>> we have some buffer overflow?
> 
> No, as I said above, it is an error indicator, not an overflow.

I stand corrected :)

> Can you start with 'lsdev -v' at the loader prompt?

Sure!

cd devices:
disk devices:
      disk0: BIOS drive C:
pxe devices:


ls doesn't see anything. I assume that ls disk0:/ should have worked, 
right?

I tried setting root_disk_unit to 0, 1, 2... and ls doesn't see 
anything.

I must admit, to my shame (I was a member of the Forth Interest Group 20 
years ago!) that I am completely lost with the loader. For me it's 
always been a matter of install and forget ;)



Borja.