translated geometry of the disk. This code will only change the
disk geometry if it can find a geometry which is consistent with
all partition entries, so it's very conservative about choosing
a new disk geometry. Under some circumstances, it will choose a
number of cylinders which is a little lower than it needs to be,
but this code is enough so that you can create new partitions
with the correct physical addresses.
The right solution to this problem is to have the boot loader
communicate the BIOS geometry of each disk to the kernel, in a
manner similar to the symbol table, and then provide a kernel
interface to get at that information. I'm unfortunately not
really qualified to make such a change, and I want something
that works better than the status quo.
phil