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Red Hat 6.2 Installation



   This sounds exactly like the problem I was having with a laptop at
Softpro a few weeks ago.  The issue is actually LILO's (Linux's boot
loader) ability to see past some certiain point on the disk. In this case
it was a problem with anything past 8GB.  This is only a problem at
boot time, when LILO has to grab the kernel from disk and load it
into memory.  Once the kernel takes over, the limitations are
(mostly) gone. There are supposed to be flags that will allow newer
BIOSes to tell newer LILOs how to see the whole disk. I personally
couldn't make it work as such.

   The solution is usually to make a small 10-20MB /boot partition BELOW
the 8GB point on the drive. On a new system it's best to put it first on
the drive, but that's not necessary. On the laptop I was working on, the
/boot ended up just after the 5GB primary Win98 partition. Disk Druid (the
partitioning tool under RedHat) would complain about the / partition being
too big until I created /boot.  Then it would let me do anything I wanted
with / .

   Now, this workaround MIGHT not be needed if you partition with fdisk
(or Partition Magic, or whatever), and find the right LILO settings.  In
your case however, I'd just do it the easy way until you're feeling more
experimental.


-- 
     -Matt

Life is a gamble at terrible odds, if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.
		-- Tom Stoppard, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead"


On Tue, 30 Jan 2001, Manish Raj Sharma wrote:

> I have been trying to install Linux Red Hat 6.2 and to be very frank I am
> new to the linux world. I have a 20 GB hard disk and I partioned 5 GB for
> linux. I am able to reach the point in the installation procedure where it
> asks me the partion details. It is here that in the last detail it says
> that the partition area is too large (even if I give 1000!!) The normal
> figure that I should give is 4416. I am not able to proceed beyond this
> point. A friend of mine said that becoz I have a 20 GB hardisk...the linux
> cannot write beyond certain sector or some such stuff....
> Please help!!
>
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