yet another dual boot thread

[swami]

I had the error and attempted the repair method listed
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedor.../msg00908.html

But when I issue the command
sfdisk -d /dev/hda | sfdisk --no-reread -H255 /dev/hda

rebooting yeilds the same errors. This is the output I get after the above command, I think the end line indicates some sort of error, but this is not dealt with in the above link.

----BEGIN PASTE OF OUTPUT----

Disk /dev/hda: 24792 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Old situation:
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 0+ 7661 7662- 61544983+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/hda3 7662 11485 3824 30716280 83 Linux
/dev/hda4 11486 24791 13306 106880445 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 11486+ 11740 255- 2048256 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda6 11741+ 14290 2550- 20482843+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
New situation:
Units = sectors of 512 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End #sectors Id System
/dev/hda1 * 63 123090029 123089967 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 0 - 0 0 Empty
/dev/hda3 123090030 184522589 61432560 83 Linux
/dev/hda4 184522590 398283479 213760890 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 184522653 188619164 4096512 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda6 188619228 229584914 40965687 7 HPFS/NTFS
Successfully wrote the new partition table

Re-reading the partition table ...
The command to re-read the partition table failed
Reboot your system now, before using mkfs


----END PASTE OF OUTPUT----

Any suggestions are appreciated.

[ilja]

http://fedorafaq.org/#nodualboot
says

If the above doesn't work, or it gives you an error, try "-H240" instead of "-H255".

[swami]

trying the -H240 instead of -H255 leads to the following, which is even more unplesant than the previous:


[root@localhost sbin]# ./sfdisk -d /dev/hda | ./sfdisk --no-reread -H240 /dev/hda
Warning: HDIO_GETGEO says that there are 255 heads

Disk /dev/hda: 24792 cylinders, 240 heads, 63 sectors/track
Warning: extended partition does not start at a cylinder boundary.
DOS and Linux will interpret the contents differently.
Old situation:
Warning: The partition table looks like it was made
for C/H/S=*/255/63 (instead of 24792/240/63).
For this listing I'll assume that geometry.
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 0+ 7661 7662- 61544983+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/hda3 7662 11485 3824 30716280 83 Linux
/dev/hda4 11486 24791 13306 106880445 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 11486+ 11740 255- 2048256 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda6 11741+ 14290 2550- 20482843+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
Warning: given size (213760890) exceeds max allowable size (190332450)

sfdisk: bad input


So, evidently the 255 was correct. Any other suggestions?