Re: [opensuse] adding hard drives and such

2007-04-06 Thread Carlos E. R.
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El 2007-04-05 a las 23:07 -0400, Larry Stotler escribió:

(you forgot to email to the list)

 On 4/5/07, Carlos E. R. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  With any type of raid, any level?
  I can understand this working with a mirror set: the kernel can load from
  any one side. But what about level 5, for instance? There is no single
  driver from which to load the kernel, you have to read from the three in
  the precise order.
(I meant drive, not driver)
 
 With initrd, it shouldn't matter.  The initrd ramdisk is small and
 loaded first, but probably should be on the first disk, since you have
 to specify a partition.  That's why I never liked software RAID.

In my understanding, it would matter, because to read the initrd you need 
to be able to read the array. It would only work if grub code is able to 
read from a raid 5 unaided (both the kernel and initrd have to be read and 
loaded by the bootloader).

 Further, with an LVM, if you lose the first drive, then(from my
 understanding), you can't get any data off the other drives.  That's
 why I don't use it.

Dunno about that. 

- -- 
Saludos
   Carlos E.R.

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Re: [opensuse] adding hard drives and such

2007-04-06 Thread dwain


Larry Stotler wrote:
 On 4/5/07, Larry Stotler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Further, what are your system specs?  Pentium 3?  K6-2?  Athlon?
 Speed?  Chipset?

 Look at the file /var/log/boot.msg for more system specific info.


Pentium 3  450Mhz and the chip set is Intel4408BX AGP

I looked at the boot.msg; it was pretty much Greek to me.  Somethings I
could figure out, but for the most part, when I read it I just went, huh?


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Dwain Alford
P.O. Box 145
Winfield, Alabama  35594

telephone:  205.487.2570
cellphone:  205.495.5619

The artist may use any form which his expression demands;
for his inner impulse must find suitable expression.

 Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning The Spiritual In Art




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telephone:  205.487.2570
cellphone:  205.495.5619

The artist may use any form which his expression demands;
for his inner impulse must find suitable expression.

 Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning The Spiritual In Art

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Re: [opensuse] adding hard drives and such

2007-04-06 Thread Larry Stotler

On 4/6/07, dwain [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Pentium 3  450Mhz and the chip set is Intel4408BX AGP


Then it's probably an  ATA/33 drive controller.  It should support the
newer drives up to 120GB, but you won't get the full speed out of
them.  You could try a PCI IDE controller, or look for a SATA
drive/controller combo.  I installed a 400GB SATA drive and controller
in my Dual P3/Xeon 500Mhz system, and it make a good bit of
difference.  Though my chipset is a 440GX, which supports ATA/66.


I looked at the boot.msg; it was pretty much Greek to me.  Somethings I
could figure out, but for the most part, when I read it I just went, huh?


No problem.  I remember those days.  If you want, send it to me as an
attachment(off list), and I will decode the info for you.  I can
pretty much tell anything you need to know about a system by reading
that file these days.
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Re: [opensuse] adding hard drives and such

2007-04-05 Thread Darryl Gregorash
On 2007-04-04 22:53, dwain wrote:
 snip
 first to load (?) and the board manufacturer says with the BIOS update I
 have that the largest drive I can use is 40GB, how do I get a larger
 drive to be read so I can load the operating system on it? Not that I
 need anything larger than a 40GB drive anyway.

   
Whatever device driver is in the BIOS is completely replaced by the
driver with the Linux kernel, and that can certainly read anything the
IDE controller is able to read. With 40-wire IDE cable, that should be
anything up to 120GB. There may be other limiting factors, but in
principle, you should be able to reach the 120GB limit once the kernel
is loaded.

The only requirement, as others have noted, is that everything the
system needs to boot, ie. everything up to and including the kernel and
IDE drivers (which should be compiled into the kernel anyway, or at
least in the initrd) must be in a location the BIOS can find. That is
trivial to achieve, as you only need a /boot partition of 10 MB or so,
which is only 1 or 2 cylinders. If you make a separate /boot partition
on the first two cylinders, you have more than enough room for the
kernel and initrd, plus any boot loader files. Even only one cylinder
should be sufficient, if you do not intend to install other kernels on
the system.

What I would suggest you try, if inclined, is to borrow an 80GB drive
and install it as /dev/hdc. Then boot the system, run (as root) fdisk
-l /dev/hdc, and see what it says. I will be surprised if it does not
report a full 80GB on the drive.

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Re: [opensuse] adding hard drives and such

2007-04-05 Thread James Knott
Rajko M. wrote:
 I'm sure that even with the BIOS limitation to 1024 cylinders, which is long 
 time obsolete, it was possible to use much larger drives than recognized by 
 the BIOS. The only limitation was that kernel and initrd must be within first 
 1024 cylinders. That was usually assured by setting small boot partition in 
 the begining of the drive, up to the 1023 cylinder (numbering is starting 
 with 0 ). That is actually where separate boot partition has its purpose. 
  
   
Isn't a separate /boot also required when using LVM or software RAID?


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Re: [opensuse] adding hard drives and such

2007-04-05 Thread Joe Morris (NTM)
James Knott wrote:
 Isn't a separate /boot also required when using LVM or software RAID?
Not any more.  It was recommended with 8.0 or maybe 8.2, but I know I
quit having a separate boot for my software raid 1 with 9.3, and it is
working with no real problems now with 10.2.

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Registered Linux user 231871 running openSUSE 10.2 x86_64





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Re: [opensuse] adding hard drives and such

2007-04-05 Thread Carlos E. R.
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The Thursday 2007-04-05 at 20:05 +0800, Joe Morris (NTM) wrote:

 James Knott wrote:
  Isn't a separate /boot also required when using LVM or software RAID?
 Not any more.  It was recommended with 8.0 or maybe 8.2, but I know I
 quit having a separate boot for my software raid 1 with 9.3, and it is
 working with no real problems now with 10.2.

With any type of raid, any level?

I can understand this working with a mirror set: the kernel can load from 
any one side. But what about level 5, for instance? There is no single 
driver from which to load the kernel, you have to read from the three in 
the precise order.

- -- 
Cheers,
   Carlos E. R.

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Re: [opensuse] adding hard drives and such

2007-04-05 Thread Joe Morris (NTM)
Joe Morris (NTM) wrote:
 James Knott wrote:
   
 Isn't a separate /boot also required when using LVM or software RAID?
 
 Not any more.  It was recommended with 8.0 or maybe 8.2, but I know I
 quit having a separate boot for my software raid 1 with 9.3, and it is
 working with no real problems now with 10.2.

   
i should have qualified that, not any more for software raid.  With LVM,
I think so.

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Registered Linux user 231871 running openSUSE 10.2 x86_64





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Re: [opensuse] adding hard drives and such

2007-04-05 Thread Joe Morris (NTM)
Carlos E. R. wrote:
 With any type of raid, any level?
I'm not sure, I have only used raid 1.

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Re: [opensuse] adding hard drives and such

2007-04-05 Thread Larry Stotler

On 4/5/07, Carlos E. R. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

With any type of raid, any level?
I can understand this working with a mirror set: the kernel can load from
any one side. But what about level 5, for instance? There is no single
driver from which to load the kernel, you have to read from the three in
the precise order.


With initrd, it shouldn't matter.  The initrd ramdisk is small and
loaded first, but probably should be on the first disk, since you have
to specify a partition.  That's why I never liked software RAID.
Further, with an LVM, if you lose the first drive, then(from my
understanding), you can't get any data off the other drives.  That's
why I don't use it.
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Re: [opensuse] adding hard drives and such

2007-04-05 Thread Larry Stotler

On 4/5/07, Larry Stotler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

On 4/5/07, dwain [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 This is way over my head, but I'm trying to wrap my brain around this.
 I can set auto detection for the primary drive (or all of the
 peripherals for that matter) in the BIOS, but since the BIOS is the
 first to load (?) and the board manufacturer says with the BIOS update I
 have that the largest drive I can use is 40GB, how do I get a larger
 drive to be read so I can load the operating system on it? Not that I
 need anything larger than a 40GB drive anyway.

There have been several limits on hard drive sizes over the years.
The most common are the 504/528MB(most drive sizes are calculated
using base 2 by a BIOS, and base 10 by a manufacturer.  That's why
your 40GB drive may only have 37GB of space.), the 2GB, the 8GB, the
32GB, and the 137GB.  Some of these were design limits, others were
limited because of the way they were implemented(it gets very
technical.  Here's a good article:
http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/hard_drive_size_barriers.htm

Anyway, if your system will see a 40GB drive, then it should be fine
with a 120GB drive.  Also, keep in mind that older drives spread the
data over a larger area, while newer drives pack it in very tightly.
The smaller the size of the packed data, the faster it can be read.
So, a 40GB drive will way outperform a 2GB drive.  Most 2GB drives
were ATA-16.7, or 16.7MB maximum transfer rate or slower.  a newer
40-120GB drive will be an ATA-100, which is 100MB/s Max.  Of course
actual speed varies, so an older drive may only reach 3MB/s, while a
newer one will reach about 30-60MB/s.

Further, what are your system specs?  Pentium 3?  K6-2?  Athlon?
Speed?  Chipset?

Look at the file /var/log/boot.msg for more system specific info.

If you have 768MB, I would say use a 1GB SWAP drive for use in case
you want to be able to suspend to disk.  I always make my SWAP drive
the first partition because it's easier to set it up that way.  The
system auto calculates the rest of the drive.  Then, I just name the
2nd drive something like /files and use it for storage.  With a 40GB
drive, you really don't need separate partitions for /home or /usr,
unless you want to preserve your /home or move it to another machine.
I use the /files system(ie, /files, /files1. /files2, etc) so that
when I re-install(I never upgrade.  Fresh installs are much better
IMHO), I don't have to worry about backing up that data.


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Re: [opensuse] adding hard drives and such

2007-04-04 Thread Joe Morris (NTM)
dwain wrote:
 I am planning on adding a third hard drive to my mix.  I will be buying
 2 new larger ones, one for root and one for home and i would like to use
 the third one as a swap drive.
   
Swap is typically 2x your RAM.  I haven't seen a HD available that small
for long time.  Just provide a swap partition, typically 1-2 GB, but
more if needed, on your root drive.
 Would it be best not to use the third one as a swap drive and leave the
 swap drive on the root drive?
   
Yes.  Not sure what size drives you are talking about (why you are
buying 2 but adding only a 3rd?), but the smallest you can buy at my
local supplier now is 80 GB, way too much for swap.
 I also want to copy my home drive to the new larger drive.  Are there
 any issues I need to be aware of that could cause some problems with
 regard to data access and such?
   
No, you will find this a much more friendly activity in linux than you
were used to in Windows.

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Registered Linux user 231871 running openSUSE 10.2 x86_64





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Re: [opensuse] adding hard drives and such

2007-04-04 Thread Randall R Schulz
On Wednesday 04 April 2007 15:35, Joe Morris (NTM) wrote:
 dwain wrote:
  I am planning on adding a third hard drive to my mix.  I will be
  buying 2 new larger ones, one for root and one for home and i would
  like to use the third one as a swap drive.

 Swap is typically 2x your RAM.

This is not a meaningful rule of thumb--it has nothing to do with 
anything real. If anything, having more physical RAM means you need 
less swap space to accommodate any given process mix.

No matter how much RAM you have and no matter how much swap you 
configure, you'll hit a hard allocation limit (roughly RAM + Swap - 
Kernel), at which point programs' requests for more memory, attempts to 
fork a new process or attempts exec new programs will fail.

So the real question is: How much virtual memory do you need during peak 
situations. Subtract from that the physical RAM size, add the fixed 
kernel memory requirements and that's how much swap you need.

And, of course, any periods during which the working set (memory 
activately being accessed by running processes) exceeds physical memory 
(less kernel reserved memory) will be times during which thrashing 
results. When this happens, CPU utilization is low even though the load 
average is high and disk activity becomes nearly continuous and is 
dominated by paging traffic. Anything other than brief and transient 
occurrence of thrashing is usually intolerable.


 ...

 --
 Joe Morris


Randall Schulz
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Re: [opensuse] adding hard drives and such

2007-04-04 Thread Gavin Chester
On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 06:35 +0800, Joe Morris (NTM) wrote:
 dwain wrote:
  I am planning on adding a third hard drive to my mix.  I will be
 buying
  2 new larger ones, one for root and one for home and i would like to
 use
  the third one as a swap drive.

 Swap is typically 2x your RAM.  I haven't seen a HD available that
 small
 for long time.  Just provide a swap partition, typically 1-2 GB, but
 more if needed, on your root drive.

The 2x ram figure for swap was always very arbitrary, according to what
I have read.  In fact, these days with ram being comparatively cheap
there is argument for reducing that swap ratio, or even having NO swap
partition at all - especially if you are looking at 1GB of ram in your
machine.  Your partitioner will alert you when you try and configure a
system like that, but I have setup a suse system with no swap when I had
2GB of ram and it ran just as stable as if I had a swap.  After all, it
would be ridiculous to slavishly follow that old ratio and for me to
have allocated 4GB to swap in that system! 
 
  Would it be best not to use the third one as a swap drive and leave
 the
  swap drive on the root drive? 

If you must have swap, yes it would be best to have it on the first
sectors of the root drive and leave the other drive spare for a
different partition, say /var /usr /opt or /tmp.  How you allocate
things depends entirely on what size drives you have.

Gavin 

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Re: [opensuse] adding hard drives and such

2007-04-04 Thread Joe Morris (NTM)
Randall R Schulz wrote:
 On Wednesday 04 April 2007 15:35, Joe Morris (NTM) wrote:
   
 dwain wrote:
 
 I am planning on adding a third hard drive to my mix.  I will be
 buying 2 new larger ones, one for root and one for home and i would
 like to use the third one as a swap drive.
   
 Swap is typically 2x your RAM.
 

 This is not a meaningful rule of thumb--it has nothing to do with 
 anything real. If anything, having more physical RAM means you need 
 less swap space to accommodate any given process mix.
   
I think you may be forgetting if he uses suspend to disk, it needs to
fit the memory in his swap partition.  Not necessarily 2x, but more than 1x.

-- 
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Registered Linux user 231871 running openSUSE 10.2 x86_64





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Re: [opensuse] adding hard drives and such

2007-04-04 Thread dwain
Joe Morris (NTM) wrote:
 dwain wrote:
   
 I am planning on adding a third hard drive to my mix.  I will be buying
 2 new larger ones, one for root and one for home and i would like to use
 the third one as a swap drive.
   
 
 Swap is typically 2x your RAM.  I haven't seen a HD available that small
 for long time.  Just provide a swap partition, typically 1-2 GB, but
 more if needed, on your root drive.
   
 Would it be best not to use the third one as a swap drive and leave the
 swap drive on the root drive?
   
 
 Yes.  Not sure what size drives you are talking about (why you are
 buying 2 but adding only a 3rd?), but the smallest you can buy at my
 local supplier now is 80 GB, way too much for swap.
   
I am replacing a 13GB drive and a 4GB drive with 2 40GB 7200rpm drives. 
I had intended to use a 2GB drive that I have for the swap drive.  The
reason I'm using 40GB drives is that that's all the drive my BIOS on
this old machine will handle.  Besides, I don't need a larger drive than
40GB.
 I also want to copy my home drive to the new larger drive.  Are there
 any issues I need to be aware of that could cause some problems with
 regard to data access and such?
   
 
 No, you will find this a much more friendly activity in linux than you
 were used to in Windows.
   

Glad to know this, I guess that a select all and move/copy to the new
drive is all that is needed?


-- 
Dwain Alford
P.O. Box 145
Winfield, Alabama  35594

telephone:  205.487.2570
cellphone:  205.495.5619

The artist may use any form which his expression demands;
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Re: [opensuse] adding hard drives and such

2007-04-04 Thread Carlos E. R.
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The Wednesday 2007-04-04 at 21:06 -0500, dwain wrote:

...
 The
 reason I'm using 40GB drives is that that's all the drive my BIOS on
 this old machine will handle.  

Fidlesticks! :-p

I have an old 80386SX machine, which doesn't recognise any disk (you have 
to type the head, sector, track numbers into the bios setup), and which 
doesn't accept more than 512 MB, but linux happily uses an 8 GB disk on 
it. I believe the theoretical limit was 2 GB at the time, 512MB per 
partition, I think.

I have also a pentium 1 machine, with an old bios, using also much larger 
disks than it was originally designed for. I forgot the numbers and I'm 
not going to power it up now, so I will not cite them.

Ah! And my current machine also doesn't recognise my 160 GB nor my 320 GB 
hardisks - however, that's what Linux uses and boots from. Even Windows-Me 
works (provided I don't try to partition it in windows!)

Who cares about the BIOS? This is Linux!

:-P


seriously, once Linux is running, most of those limitations do not exist, 
the bios is not used. You may have problems during booting, however.


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Cheers,
   Carlos E. R.
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Re: [opensuse] adding hard drives and such

2007-04-04 Thread Rajko M.
On Wednesday 04 April 2007 21:06, dwain wrote:
...
 I am replacing a 13GB drive and a 4GB drive with 2 40GB 7200rpm drives.
 I had intended to use a 2GB drive that I have for the swap drive. 

The 2 GB is probably very slow comparing to 40 GB, so just don't use it. 

 The 
 reason I'm using 40GB drives is that that's all the drive my BIOS on
 this old machine will handle.  Besides, I don't need a larger drive than
 40GB.

 :-)  
Wait a while and you'll see. 
I have 2x80 and external 120 on this machine and it is not too much. 

Have you tried a bigger drive. 
BIOS is relevant only for the first moments of booting, and for placement of 
boot partition. 

...
 Glad to know this, I guess that a select all and move/copy to the new
 drive is all that is needed?

It should work like that if you install 40 GB as /dev/hdb, boot in live CD. 
If not than don't copy /proc and /sys, just create empty directories on target 
partition. I'm wondering what would do 
 dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb
if you use it from some Live CD like:
 http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page 
and then just put 40 GB as /dev/hda.
I haven't tried that, but it should make perfect copy of 13 GB disk. 

-- 
Regards, Rajko.
http://en.opensuse.org/Portal 
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Re: [opensuse] adding hard drives and such

2007-04-04 Thread dwain
Greg Freemyer wrote:
 If you are using swap enough to worry about the speed of the drive,
 you have something wrong in my opinion.

 Do a vmstat 5 and watch the so column.  If it is zero most of the
 time you're not really using swap. i.e Nothing is being sent to swap.

 If it is typically non-zero during normal system usage, you have a
 problem (or some really big programs).  Typically not enough RAM.  In
 that situation I personally would buy more ram, not try to figure out
 how to make swap faster.

 Greg

When I currently look at the process tab in Ksysmon the swap is zero. 
I've got 768MB RAM in the system.  It's old and a bit slow, but it runs
opensuse and I have to say that I am thrilled to have it running, since
the first time I tried to install it I couldn't get it to get up and go.

I don't have a lot of money to build a new system right now and I'm just
trying to keep this system running as long and as efficiently as I can
for the time it has left.  I don't do much serious work on it and I hope
to start learning about programming and server management.

Damn I really like this operating system!  Beats the H E double hockey
sticks out of Windows any day of the week!

Cheers,
Dwain

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P.O. Box 145
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telephone:  205.487.2570
cellphone:  205.495.5619

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Re: [opensuse] adding hard drives and such

2007-04-04 Thread dwain
Rajko M. wrote:
 On Wednesday 04 April 2007 21:06, dwain wrote:
 ...
   
 Have you tried a bigger drive. 
 BIOS is relevant only for the first moments of booting, and for placement of 
 boot partition. 

   
Yes I have.  Before I updated the BIOS I tried a 40GB drive and the
machine didn't recognize the drive at all.  Since updating the BIOS I
know that the machine will read a 40GB drive.  I have not tried anything
larger, but if the board manufacturer is correct, 40GB is the limit with
the BIOS update.

-- 
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P.O. Box 145
Winfield, Alabama  35594

telephone:  205.487.2570
cellphone:  205.495.5619

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Re: [opensuse] adding hard drives and such

2007-04-04 Thread Rajko M.
On Wednesday 04 April 2007 22:37, dwain wrote:
 Rajko M. wrote:
  On Wednesday 04 April 2007 21:06, dwain wrote:
  ...
 
  Have you tried a bigger drive.
  BIOS is relevant only for the first moments of booting, and for placement
  of boot partition.

 Yes I have.  Before I updated the BIOS I tried a 40GB drive and the
 machine didn't recognize the drive at all.  Since updating the BIOS I
 know that the machine will read a 40GB drive.  I have not tried anything
 larger, but if the board manufacturer is correct, 40GB is the limit with
 the BIOS update.

As Carlos mentioned there was the time that we had to type number of heads, 
cylinders and sectors, but linux worked. 

I can't say for sure, that it will work, as it can be some limitation in disk 
controller. 

I'm sure that even with the BIOS limitation to 1024 cylinders, which is long 
time obsolete, it was possible to use much larger drives than recognized by 
the BIOS. The only limitation was that kernel and initrd must be within first 
1024 cylinders. That was usually assured by setting small boot partition in 
the begining of the drive, up to the 1023 cylinder (numbering is starting 
with 0 ). That is actually where separate boot partition has its purpose. 
 
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Regards, Rajko.
http://en.opensuse.org/Portal 
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Re: [opensuse] adding hard drives and such

2007-04-04 Thread dwain
Rajko M. wrote:
 On Wednesday 04 April 2007 22:37, dwain wrote:
   
 Rajko M. wrote:
 
 On Wednesday 04 April 2007 21:06, dwain wrote:
 ...

 Have you tried a bigger drive.
 BIOS is relevant only for the first moments of booting, and for placement
 of boot partition.
   
 Yes I have.  Before I updated the BIOS I tried a 40GB drive and the
 machine didn't recognize the drive at all.  Since updating the BIOS I
 know that the machine will read a 40GB drive.  I have not tried anything
 larger, but if the board manufacturer is correct, 40GB is the limit with
 the BIOS update.
 

 As Carlos mentioned there was the time that we had to type number of heads, 
 cylinders and sectors, but linux worked. 

 I can't say for sure, that it will work, as it can be some limitation in disk 
 controller. 

 I'm sure that even with the BIOS limitation to 1024 cylinders, which is long 
 time obsolete, it was possible to use much larger drives than recognized by 
 the BIOS. The only limitation was that kernel and initrd must be within first 
 1024 cylinders. That was usually assured by setting small boot partition in 
 the begining of the drive, up to the 1023 cylinder (numbering is starting 
 with 0 ). That is actually where separate boot partition has its purpose. 
  
   
This is way over my head, but I'm trying to wrap my brain around this. 
I can set auto detection for the primary drive (or all of the
peripherals for that matter) in the BIOS, but since the BIOS is the
first to load (?) and the board manufacturer says with the BIOS update I
have that the largest drive I can use is 40GB, how do I get a larger
drive to be read so I can load the operating system on it? Not that I
need anything larger than a 40GB drive anyway.

-- 
Dwain Alford
P.O. Box 145
Winfield, Alabama  35594

telephone:  205.487.2570
cellphone:  205.495.5619

The artist may use any form which his expression demands;
for his inner impulse must find suitable expression.

 Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning The Spiritual In Art

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