Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 14:41:28 -0700 (PDT) From: Ben Manes <anarchy@crl.com> To: "Le, Dat" <DLe@vcomcss1.telstra.com.au> Cc: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Partitions Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.990820140649.2355B-100000@crl.crl.com> In-Reply-To: <199908200046.KAA24562@mail.cdn.telstra.com.au>
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> I have a 12GB HDD. Ok, there's a lot of problems that your going to face, as you already have. I've dealt with some of these, most recently the 1,024 cylinder problem. Here's what you need to do. First Create a layou for your drive, both on paper then using fdisk (UNIX).I know FreeBSD will not boot if it is past the 1,024 limit, and in some distrubutions, the same is with Linux. This is because of neither install a boot block (boot-strap as some call it). I know RedHat 5.05 has this option, but Suse 6.1 and Caledra OpenLinux 2.2 don't. This means you have two choices. First is to create a small (ie. 10mb) partition in the beginning of the drive and have Linux mount that as /boot. Linux will boot off that partition, and then work past the limit. FreeBSD may do something similar, although I haven't checked in on it. If you can't get that to work (ie, Install program wont let you), then just put the Linux partition infront of the limit. For my laptop, I put a 2gb OpenLinux partition at the beginning of the drive, and Windows 98 for the rest. That was because OpenLinux wouldn't let me us the /boot trick. For FreeBSD, you'll have to do the same setup, because it just wont work. I had to put it on a different drive when using my desktop, and gave up on it on my laptop before I moved all the partitions. NT however is not a problem. It uses the mbr, and boots from the Windows 98 partition. If you trick it so it only boots from its NTFS partition, it may have a cylinder limit. It will also be annoying when editing the boot.ini file after it knows of the c: drive. The easiest thing to do is to just let it write over the mbr, and then put NTFS at the end of the drive (past the clinder limit so Linux/FreeBSD can roam ahead). Windows 98 will obviously go ahead of the cylinder limit, as it uses the mbr exclusively. If you begin running out of room above the 1,024 limit, either put windows 98 FAT32 across the threash-hold (meaning above and after), or give it two parttions. It works fine on my laptop taking the rest of the drive (10gb) with OpenLinux infront. The last problem is booting these suckers. If Linux is able to use a boot block, do that! In either case, you can merely config Lilo to 'point' to the other Operating Systems. Having Linux active and setting the default OS, it will easily let you go to windows(98/NT), Linux, or FreeBSD. For the Windows 98/NT partition, setup NT's boot manager to automaticly point to the WindowOS you use the most. If you want Windows 98 as the default OS in general, setup Lilo towards Windows, and NT's towards 98 with a small time-out. Lastly, I don't recomend the trouble, but you can find a How-to for booting NT directly through Lilo. So, here's a potential layout. Remember, the 1,024 cylinder limit is at about 8.4gb on LBA mode (right?). 1: FreeBSD (3gb) 2: Linux (3gb) 3: Windows 98 (4gb) (crosses boundary) 4: Windows NT (2gb) (boots off w98 mbr) That *should* make it all work without bothering with boot blocks, etc. You just need to confiure lilo, either during install or after (edit /etc/lilo.conf and then run /sbin/lilo). If you want to have System Commander or BootMagic manage the Operating Systems, they will merely give you a graphical menu, but not solve any limitations. In either case, Hope that fixes it... Ben To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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