Re: Setup w/large hard drives
On Sun, 10 May 1998, Randy Edwards wrote:
> > Why do you need a separate partition to boot from?
> > I have an 800mb root partition (which is more than 1024 cylinders,
> > obviously) and it boots from that just fine, and that's on /dev/hdb
> > too.
>
> This is what I thought too! As I said, I initially tried a 64 meg /
> partition thinking I could keep /boot and other things in that space, and then
> have /usr /home /var /tmp, etc., on different partitions just for flexibility.
> But with that situation the install program would not give me the option to
> select the / partition (the first, primary partition on the first hard drive).
With the old IDE drives, the bios did not read past 512k. So it the
kernel was written to an area past you 1024 (?) cylinders, lilo would
not be able to find it, and then the boot would fail. As I understand
it, you could get luckly when the kernel was written, and it would fall
in the range that was readable, and it would boot, but the next time
you compiled the kernel you might not get that lucky. Once the kernel
booted up, you can read past the 512k. The EIDE cards do not have this
limitation.
Mark W. Blunier
blunier@concentric.net
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