LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Mike Andrew <mikero@norfolk.nf>
  To  : linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au
  Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 13:12:34 +1130

Re: More space required

On Mon, 26 Jun 2000, Evan Bourlotos wrote:
> Is there a limitation as to how much disk linux will recognise?
> I have heard things like 8gb is its limit etc.
> Can anyone explain this for me please.

there is an 8gig / 1024 cylinder limit for ANY OS imposed by the bios of the
PC.

The bios doesn't have the facility to boot anywhere else on a given hard drive.

That's the bad news.

The good news is that the newest bios's now have EDD which removes this
limitation. In linux, you need to use the latest lilo source code (on the site
below). But that won't help the greater majority of machines out there.

The second method is to use Grub (Grand UNified Boot loader). This is the
approach Caldera have taken. It uses smoke and mirrors to handle the 8gig limit
and replaces lilo in toto.

In both cases, we aren't talking Operating Systems, just boot loaders.
Partition magic, boot manager, and all the others wont help you. They partition
disks any way you want, but it is the boot loader that loads the os, not the
partition manager.  Lilo and Grub are not part of Linux, they operate before
Linux and any other OS installed on the disk drive.

the third method is to account for this 8gig issue manually. This has been up
to now the 'preferred' method.

What you do is configure a tiny boot partition at the beginning of the drive (a
few meg). This way, you garantee, that no matter how large the drive is, the
boot loader can use the bios to load a 'real' loader from that small partition.

For this last option you need to read up on lilo

bedtime reading -> lilo -> on the site below.


http://linux.nf/stepbystep.htm + mirrors
StepByStep submissions: mikero@norfolk.nf


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