Stanley A. Schultz wrote:
> I'm using LILO to boot anyway.
Doh! There goes my boot sector idea.
> Does anybody know what the limit is for Linux?
I was thinking the sheer number of partitions was screwing up Linux,
so I went digging for the answer to this. Here's what the LDP's
partition mini-HOWTO says:
Each logical partition contains a pointer to the next logical partition,
which implies that the number of logical partitions is unlimited.
However, linux imposes limits on the total number of any type of
prtition on a drive, so this effectively limits the number of logical
partitions. This is at most 15 partitions total on an SCSI disk and 63
total on an IDE disk.
( http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/Partition/partition-3.html )
You do mention that you're having difficulty accessing the last 5
partitions on the drive, and if I'm reading correctly you have 20
partitions on that drive. It sounds like you're bumping against SCSI's
limits on an IDE drive. Do you see any mention of SCSI in your boot
options, or dmesg output? Have you tried compiling your own kernel?
Linux can do SCSI emulation for IDE drives, which might be causing this.
I doubt it would be present in the install kernel, but the post-install
one could very well have it enabled.
HJ Hornbeck
