Red Hat linux 7.3 hard disk space problem
 

I am preparing to install on an old pc 128 mg ram,200 mmx cpu,6 gig hd an old version of red hat linux 7.3 in dos mode with floppy boot disk. I can t start in cdrom bootup mode because my bios is too old.

My boot manager disk for my hard drive,put a limitation on partition of 2 gig each for a total of 3 partition,6 gigs total.

My question is, because of the limitation of the dos to 2 gigs per partitions, how am I suppose to install of red hat linux that required at least 4 gigs in DOS mode.

What are my options?

What are the steps to do it in dos mode with boot disk? I cant use cdrom boot and usb port is not possible

Please help.

S.

Small HD with partitions too small to fit whole install in just one.
 

I haven't installed RedHat in a while but it was very menu driven and user friendly from what I remember:
Separate the RedHat install directories into several partitions like
for example: / in partition 1, /home in partition 2, /var in partition 3. That way, all of RedHat does not go into one partition if it wont fit
in one. You also may want to create a 256Meg partition to be the linux swap partition. So that means you may have four to play with.
I think that is one possible solution.

You could make a Grub boot floppy and then edit the grub config to access the install on the cdrom.

http://cstein.kings.cam.ac.uk/~chris/bootgrub.html
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html

You might have to chainload the cdrom boot.
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/man...in_002dloading

There is also a possibility to use LVM with 3 physical volumes and only 1 or 2 logical ones. That is if Red Hat 7.3 has LVM support.

what are the instructions for lvm support?

You are working too hard.
If you use a proper boot floppy, you can boot the cdrom and linux won't care about 2GB limits.

Try this one, it even includes a boot menu to select the cdrom.
http://rescup.winbuilder.net/bootdisk/

Here's the floppy image - http://rescup.winbuilder.net/bootdisk/allinone.img
Just put the cd in before you boot.

When installing, tell linux to use the whole disk. Delete the existing partitions first if necessary.

I'm 99% sure RH7.3 is too old for even lvm v1.

You are correct.

thank you
 

I will keep this in mind. I am waiting for my book and cd in the mail. about 2 weeks waiting time. Thank you. S.

thank you

thank you

RHEL 5.x has LVM partitions created by default, so I do not know what you need to do to run it on Red Hat 7.3. Partitions are formatted as LVM partitions and then you form "virtual" LVM partitions that will span several physical parttions/hard disks.

To use LVM on RH 7.3 he will have to install it and then work it out from there. I didn't have it on RH9, and I had to install it myself on FC3.
Besides which it's unnecessary.

on a machine that old you probably want to:
1) go to www.bootdisk.com
2) get an ms-dos 6.22 boot disk with cdrom support (will have to run the downloaded program on a windows machine with a floppy drive and a blank floppy (or one you don't mind erasing) in the drive)
3) boot to the floppy, start the install from the cd using loadlin (i forget the exact syntax i'ts been so long)
4) once booted, the linux kernel doesn't care how big the hard drive is, do the partitioning with either fdisk or disk druid
setup the partitions as follows (as a bare minimum)

/boot (100 megs at the BEGINNING of the drive, note the position at the begining is the most important part so the bios can find your boot loader)
swap - at least as big as your ram but no bigger then twice your ram
/ the rest of the drive

you can split up /home /var /usr into other partitions but i'm not sure about the minimum sizes required and i always used the above setup

with linux's fdisk/disk druid you can have up to 4 primary partitions

make sure if using fdisk that the /boot partition is set to bootable

when asked where to install the boot manager (probably lilo on a distro that old) you will want to tell it to go onto the boot sector of the drive

hope this helps