partprobe - RHEL 5.5

[MSwift]

I just ran a partprobe command(i haven't added anything new (disk etc), but got this message..

#partprobe
Warning: The disk CHS geometry (1274,255,63) reported by the operating system do
es not match the geometry stored on the disk label (2666,15,512).
Warning: The disk CHS geometry (1274,255,63) reported by the operating system do
es not match the geometry stored on the disk label (2666,15,512).
Warning: The disk CHS geometry (1274,255,63) reported by the operating system do
es not match the geometry stored on the disk label (2666,15,512).
#

Could this be ignored? I did notice one thing after this reboot. the command pvs shows the mpath devices and previously showing dm-0 type devices but that is 'coz i added a filter to the lvm.conf like this [filter = [ "a|/dev/sda|", "a|/dev/mapper/mpath.*|", "r|.*|" ] to accept the root disk and mapth devices.

Thanks

Mike.

[Matti_Kurkela]

The geometry on the disk label suggests a slightly larger total size than the OS-reported geometry, so there might be a danger of trying to use disk blocks that don't really exist. This would happen at the very end of the disk, so you're likely to see problems only after the disk is mostly filled with data.

With modern disks, the geometry is relatively unimportant, but the total number of blocks is what matters.

I'm assuming you're getting this message from some SAN disk. It might be just one disk seen through multiple paths: as partprobe walks through all /dev/sd* devices, it sees the same disk through each path and thus outputs multiple messages.

If you have a PC-style partition table on your disks, use "fdisk -ucl /dev/" to see the geometry (according to the disk label = partition table) and the block numbers for the start and end of your partitions.

Then find the real size of your disk(s) using whatever method you have available: if you can get the total number of blocks on the disk directly from the SAN administration tools, that would probably be the best way.

If the block number for the end of your partition is greater than the total size of the disk, you have a problem.

Has there been any changes at the SAN side? Perhaps a new SAN firmware, that might report disk geometries slightly different from before?

MK