Re: 8.4Gb IDE Drive Limit
Matthew Donadio wrote: I have an old Pentium Pro system that I would like to install FreeBSD 4.6.2 on. Unfortunately, its BIOS has the 8.4Gb limit, and I can't find an upgrade for it. The only drive I have available is a new Maxtor 40Gb unit. I can boot and install from the CD-ROM, and everything is OK, but I cannot get it to boot on its own. I have tried some of the suggestions in the FAQ, but I still cannot get it to work. Any ideas would be appreciated (or if anybdy knows a source of new 8.4Gb drives). Thanks. I should add that I would be happy (I think) if I could boot from CD, and have that image mount my disk. I'm not sure how to go about doing this, especially since I can't boot into my FreeBSD system right now. Thanks. -- Matthew Donadio ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: 8.4Gb IDE Drive Limit
Mike Hogsett wrote: How did you partition the 40Gb drive? Thanks for the reply. I split the drive in two with the intentions of installing FreeBSD on one slice, and Linux on the other (I haven't tried Linux yet). Are you suggesting that I should try putting / on a small slice by itself, and see if that boots? It's worth a shot. -- Matthew Donadio ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: 8.4Gb IDE Drive Limit
I split the drive in two with the intentions of installing FreeBSD on one slice, and Linux on the other (I haven't tried Linux yet). Are you suggesting that I should try putting / on a small slice by itself, and see if that boots? It's worth a shot. I would suggest that you make a 256Mb partition with a single 256Mb FreeBSD slice as the first partition on the disk, then divide the remaining space as you see fit. (Redhat*) Linux will also want a /boot partition (64 - 128Mb will do, should be below cylinder 1024). - Mike * I don't have experience with the other Linux distributions, so the others may have different requirements. P.S. I would not spend the effort installing Linux if it was my machine. FreeBSD is far superior in many ways. To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: 8.4Gb IDE Drive Limit
In the last episode (Oct 02), Matthew Donadio said: Mike Hogsett wrote: How did you partition the 40Gb drive? Thanks for the reply. I split the drive in two with the intentions of installing FreeBSD on one slice, and Linux on the other (I haven't tried Linux yet). Are you suggesting that I should try putting / on a small slice by itself, and see if that boots? It's worth a shot. I think the main problem with getting large drives to boot on old BIOSes is the 1024-cylinder limit. You need to make sure the kernel is located near enough to the start of the disk that it can be accessed with BIOS calls. If your FreeBSD partition is on the 2nd half of the disk, it probably won't boot. You might want to set it up like: |- 1024-cyl point ++---|---+--+---+ | / | / : swap : /usr | swap | /usr | ++---+--+---+ ^^ ^ ^ LinuxFreeBSD slice containingLinux Linux root all FreeBSD partitions swap/usr sda1 sda2 sda3 sda4 da0s1 da0s2da0s3 da0s4 That way both Linux and FreeBSD get their kernels near the start of the disk. -- Dan Nelson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
