LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Jake Hawkes <jake@infinitylimited.net>
  To  : David Newall <davidn@rebel.net.au>
  Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 19:43:10 -0600

Re: More space required

David Newall wrote:
> 
> >> Is there a limitation as to how much disk linux will recognise?
> > there is an 8gig / 1024 cylinder limit for ANY OS imposed by the bios
> > of the PC.
> 
> This sweeping generalisation is not quite correct.  The BIOS imposes a
> limit on the size of disk that it will address, which means that the
> bootstrap loader must fit within that limit.  There's no reason why
> the bootstrap loader must continue to use the BIOS, which means that
> so long as that boot loader fits in 1024 cylinders the remainder of
> the partition can be much larger.
> 
In fact, I seem to remember a comment in the kernel source code from
Linus:

/* from boot.s */
| well, that certainly wasn't fun :-(. Hopefully it works, and we don't
| need no steenking BIOS anyway (except for the initial loading :-).
| The BIOS-routine wants lots of unnecessary data, and it's less
| "interesting" anyway. This is how REAL programmers do it.


Linus doesn't like BIOSs much :)


btw: the above came from
http://option8.home.mindspring.com/kernelnotes.html

--
Jake Hawkes B.Eng, (CSE)

"I'm only smart enough to know how stupid I am", Joe Strummer.

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