Linux Boot partition - maximum sector on HD
 

Hello,

I recently tried to install Red Hat Linux v 9 as a second OS (multi-boot). I used a 1.1Ghz - 512Mb machine w/ an 80Gb HD.

First I installed MSWindows. I allocated for it four basic NTFS partitions - 3 of 10Gb each and the last one of 15 Gb.

Then I tried to install RedHat v9 from the bootable CDROM. The install program complained of the "source media"; it prompted 'the source could not be found' or something of that effect. That was a misleading message.

I suspected of the boot partition being too far from the HD's MBR. I rebooted Windows and removed the last partition, leaving the used partitions at 3 of 10Gb each.

I rerun the RedHat installation and it work perfectly as usual.

Do you know what is the exact maximum sector at which Linux could be installed?

Obviously beyond 45Gb is too much.

Regards

The answer depends on your hardware. Recent motherboards should be able to boot a partition anywhere on a drive, but this is not true of older motherboards.

Why 4 (or even 3) partitions for Windows?

If there is a limit on how far from the start of the HD, it is not unique to Linux. On my machine, the last OS boot partition is past 60GB.

With reference to Gethyn's post, I think it would be a BIOS limitation. You might want to check for BIOS upgrades.

If I were setting up on 1 80GB drive, I would do something like this:
15GB Windows
10GB Linux
45 GB FAT32 for shared data

Hey guys, thanks, you're absolutely right -as if you didn't already know, hehe-

I tried a similar drill on another machine, this time a newer model (2 Ghz) with an 80Gb HD. I made three NTFS partitions of 18Gb each; then I tried and installed Linux Red Hat 9 without a problem.

I'm planning to use this machine as a test environment. I want to set up a server as a 'router', if possible. This particular machine has 3 NICs, each one connected to a different hub (actually 2 switching hubs and 1 DI524 wireless router).

I want to see if using Windows 2000 + ISA Server does the job, or if Linux is better and easier to configure and maintain.

I was able to set up a RRAS on this machine on Windows 2000 Server before, having one of the NICs as
NAT port and the other as routerV2 - it worked fine for some time until I installed MSExchange on it, then the Active Directory got corrupted. So now I need to reinstall everything again.

Questions:
- do you guys know a good source of information on how to set up Linux as a router?
- any comments about ISA server?
- I also tried Windows 2003 for doing the job but because of its incorporated firewall it is really a pain to use - thumbs down to it.

Thanks again!