From: davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr) Subject: Re: > 1024 Cylinders on ESDI Date: 10 Jul 1993 01:52:56 GMT
In article <1993Jul9.084027.2572@cti.wnc.nedlloyd.nl> wncjgr@cti.wnc.nedlloyd.nl (Jilles Groenendijk) writes:
| I tried to install LINUX on a 80386/40Mhz AMD, 4Mb mem, 338Mb HD, ET4000
| I used to run DOS 5.0 on this machine, made a full backup, and tried to install it under LINUX. However I got some serious problems, (a few years ago, I got the same problems with dos 3.30, 3.31, 4.00 etc.i) Linux kept complaning about:
| "Partionion 1 has an odd number of sectors"
| "This device has more than 1024 cylinders, and could give problems..."
What this means is that the boot loader uses the BIOS to load the
kernel, and the BIOS can only address up to 1024 cylinders. If the
kernel is not in the low part of the partition the BIOS won't load it,
and worse yet may silently wrap around after 1023 to zero, giving you
*part* of a valid kernel load.
The solution is to insure that the kernel is loaded low, and one way to
do it is to create a small boot partition low, and then mount all the
parts of the disk which are higher than cyl 1023. While DOS just can't
use stuff >1023, Linux will happily mount user and source partitions
anywhere, as long as the minimal boot partition is low.
--
Bill Davidsen, davidsen%sixhub.uucp@uunet.uu.net
TMR Associates, +1 518-370-5654
C programming, data gathering, porting to open systems, heterogeneous
environments, computer controlled housing, custom software