Linux install on hard drive with >1024 cylinders

[Tinkerkill]

Does anyone know of a trick or patch for the Linux installer that enables Disk Druid to recognize and correctly write partition information to a hard disk larger than 1024 cylinders? Thanks in advance...

 

[pwhysall]

The only constraint that I know of on Linux is that the partition containing root must be within the first 1024 cylinders on the disk.<br>
This partition doesn't have to be on the first disk in the machine, either - I happily booted Linux from /dev/hdb1 by installing LILO on the MBR of the first disk. (It may improve your chances of recovery in the event of a smashed MBR if you also install a zero timeout LILO on the boot sector of the root partition - you'll need to do this anyway if you plan on a) installing Windows 95/98 (it does a sneaky FDISK /MBR without telling you)or b) using something like Boot Manager which will take over the MBR from LILO)<br>
<br>
Alternatively, ditch Disk Druid and use fdisk directly - it's not too hard and you can quit without saving changes to the partition table.<br>
<br>
Peter.

 

[Salvalinus]

Actually, it is /boot that must be contained completely with in the first 1024 cylinders of one of the two IDE disks on the primary controller, or on the SCSI disk at ID0. This is due to a limitation in MOST of the BIOSes used in PCs. You can have /root wherever you want if you make /boot a sparate partition.

 

[pwhysall]

Salvalinus - <br>
<br>
Got me. You're right. BTW, when I said "containing root" I meant "containing /", not the home directory of the user "root". Still wrong, but different!<br>
<br>
Let's clarify then - does the kernel image (vmlinuz or whatever) need to be in the /boot partition, assuming the rest of the filesystem is elsewhere?<br>
<br>
Many people (me included) just have /vmlinuz - and that could well be outside the 1024th cylinder in this scenario.<br>

 

[rael]

/boot is where all the improtant stuff Linux needs to boot are kept.<br>
As an example Redhat's 5.2 "workstation" autoinstall creates 3 partitions, /boot, /, and a swap. /boot is 18 megs, swap is 16 megs and / is the rest of the HD regardless of size (within the known limits if Linux)

 

[festus]

One easy fix to the original post is to create a seperate 1024 cylindar / partition and create seperate partitions for your data that span past the 1024th. As others have stated, this is actually a limitation of x86 and lilo, not Linux. This is a boot-strapping issue. No such problem with the Ultra-Penguin. Just Others.

 

[AntoineReid]

I usually create a /boot partition (about 24 megs as I tend to keep many different kernel images) on my ide disk, and the / filesystem is kept on scsi. the problem being that my scsi adapter cannot boot (adaptec 2910). In any case, all you have to make sure is that the filesystem containing the kernel image is in the 1024 first cyls. So people who like a big / partition (I don't) can put a small /boot at first, and one big partition with the rest of the drive if that's what they want. I still recommand having different partitions for /var, /tmp, /usr and /home, at least. just my 0.02CDN