"sfdisk -l" interpretation ?

[blnl]

sfdisk gives me the following information about one of my drives:

Disk /dev/sdb: 60801 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot Start     End   #cyls    #blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1          0+  14164   14165- 113780331   83  Linux
/dev/sdb2      14165   60800   46636  374603670    7  HPFS/NTFS
		start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (1023,0,1)
/dev/sdb3          0       -       0          0    0  Empty
/dev/sdb4          0       -       0          0    0  Empty

What is the meaning of start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (1023,0,1) line?
How can I fix this?

[devils casper]

start : ( cylinders, heads, sectors ) expected (1023,254,63) found (1023,0,1)

Did you edit partition table recently? You can fix wrong CHS values but we need a bit more info.
Is it a blank disk? Post the output of fdisk -l command here.

[blnl]

This is the result of fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xa27f48fa

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               1       14165   113780331   83  Linux
/dev/sdb2           14166       60801   374603670    7  HPFS/NTFS

It is not a blank disk.
1st partition is my /home partition.
2nd partition contains my windows media files.

Yes, the partition table has been edited recently. The reason to edit the partition table was following:
Recently I installed Fedora 12 on this machine. All partitions and file systems were recognized and mounted properly, except this /dev/sdb2 partition (it was marked Unknown). At that time sfdisk -l did not indicate any CHS issues.
I decided to backup my data and recreate the partition using Windows XP Disk Management tool. Aftere I removed the partition and created another one (with the same file system, same size and same label), Fedora recognized and mounted the new partition, but sfdisk now reports CHS issue. One problem is fixed and another is created.

[Lostfarmer]

I just ran 'sfdisk' and 'sfdisk /dev/hda -l' and also get your error on one hdd with all 8 partitions, but not concerned. No other partitioning software has any problems nor does linux or XP. It would seem both programs just want the partitions to end on a cyl. boundery, but that is not required. Tthat was the norm for MS Win 98 and pri. OS's but not any more..

[blnl]

I would like to believe that this is harmless. Maybe it is, maybe it is not.
Still, I don't like to see this kind of messages on my HDDs.

Maybe, it's time to update some routines to understand these new partitioning criteria/norms, and stop checking for the obsolete ones (action point for Linux developers ).
In the meantime, I would still like to see my HDD logs perfectly clean.

[blnl]

The problem is solved as follows:
Resizing drive partitions using the "Round to cylinders" option (see the gparted resize applet example below).


The result:
sfdisk -l shows nice clean log.

Disk /dev/sdb: 60801 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot Start     End   #cyls    #blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1          0+  15473   15474- 124294873+  83  Linux
/dev/sdb2      15474   60800   45327  364089127+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb3          0       -       0          0    0  Empty
/dev/sdb4          0       -       0          0    0  Empty

So, Lostfarmer you are right. This is indeed cylinder boundary related.

Still, someone should update sfdisk application.

[devils casper]

What is the output of fdisk -l command now?
There is a + sign with partitions and it means partitions are not build in even block size.

[blnl]

fdisk -l gives the following output:

Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xa27f48fa

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               1       15474   124294873+  83  Linux
/dev/sdb2           15475       60801   364089127+   7  HPFS/NTFS