Can you install linux to a partition that start after the 1024th Cylinder
 

Hi Folks

I've been looking to prepare some free space to install Fedora to. I've currently got Windows XP on my first hard Disk (60Gb ~40Gb used) but I have 2x 120Gb Drives RAIDed into 1 large volume that my Windows Games are on. I'd like to free up some space on this to install Linux (I'm using Partition magic) but it warns that If I create a Partition after the 1024th Cylinder that it may not be bootable.

Anybody know if this is likely to be a problem with a Fedora install. Also - any opinions on whether using Partition Magic's own Boot Magic would be better or worse than Lilo or Grub?

Thanks in advance

It used to be a problem, not with linux, but with the lilo boot loader. However, it has been fixed for a few years now.

I thought this "limitation" was due do the BIOS of the motherboard, not necessarily the software installed on it.

ie, "some" motherboards will be able to boot past cyl 1024, whereas others won't be able to do that. That's why there's a warning, you "might" have problems.....

Thanks! :)

Just need to wait on those ISO's downloading then...

I've got a fairly new board - an Asus A7N8X Deluxe. I realise (from reading this forum) that it may cause me some difficulties in terms of getting things working witth the Nvidia drivers but I think the BIOS supports booting from large disks.

Ed-MtnBiker,
That was originally the problem, lilo used the bios to access disks. Grub never had this problem because it always accessed the disks without the bios. Lilo implemented lba32 which got ride of the problem. So unless your bios doesn't support lba32 (Read: it is ancient) then you should be ok.

Is that a 386? I think My 486 could handle better than that (but it was top of the line at the time. :D)

I think you are missing the point - I'm not talking simply about booting from a large disk - but booting from a partition that starts after the 1024th partition of a disk - i.e one that is not the first physical partition..

I doubt your 486 could have seen a 120Gb drive never mind a RAID'ed 240Gb drive never mind booted from a partition beyond the 1024th cylinder :)

No, I got the point. If you want to make your life easier, edit that help file you read and remove that line that refers to the 1024th. :D That refers to an old BIOS limitation, as in back when a 1G drive was BIG (and, yes I actuall have owned a 21mb drive - just sent it to an artist so he could use the shiny platters inside for his creation)

That's right 21mb

And, yes, you don't have to worry about it. Install to your heart's content. That reference is for old versions of LILO that you'd have a hard time finding, unless you still had your Linux disks from 1999 or so. Install. You'll like it (with 120G, you could install several OS's ;))

Thanks - the download is nearly finished.

And 21Mb :D I thought my old 60mb 2.5" drive in my Amiga was small

Okay - after all that it doesn't want to install anyway,

The Fedora installer reports that the partition tables of the RAID'ed drives are corrupt and they can't be used anyway (they are fine and work perfectly in Windows XP) I have created about 30Gb of free unpartitioned space on the RAID volume to install Linux onto.

Is this problem typical with RAID sets or is it because they are using the SATA controllers on the motherboard?

Any way round it?

came out of my Zenith XT clone. A firin' fast 8088! Had to buy a disk controller for it. LOL.

Probably both. RAID has good support for the right controller, but sata is quite new and still iffy. It can be done, but there may be some work involved. I don't have either, so I'm not much help. Anybody with RAID or S-ATA???