AARRRRGH!!! (was RE: Linux Install error)

[mark at buttery.org (Mark J. Dulcey)]

Don Levey wrote:
> 
>>That could be it. Also, you will be better off when you have the 2
>>disks as masters on separate IDE channels. It appears that you have a
>>master/slave (Note that in California, it is now illegal to use those
>>terms).
>>
> 
> Well, then California can arrest me...
> If I put the disks on separate channels, that would mean I'd put the CD
> drive(s) as slaves on each channel.  I assume this will be OK?

Yes, it's fine. I consider that the preferred configuration for a system 
with 4 drives and only two IDE controllers, though the cabling can be 
tricky. It is frequently the case that the space between the connectors 
for the master and slave drives is too small to accomodate having one in 
a 5.25" bay and the other in a 3.5" bay; it depends on the design of 
your cables and your computer case.

If you have the budget and a spare PCI slot, adding an additional IDE 
controller is a good thing to do. I have that setup in two systems here, 
though I got the Promise IDE controllers for free along with hard drives.

> Well, I may keep it, simply because it is still there on the drive that is
> good.  I've got /, /home, /var as separate ext3 partitions, and /export as a
> vfat so I can read that within Win2k (which seemed to work so far).  If/when
> I reqork the machine again, or redo a new one, I won't bother with /boot.

If your separate /boot is working, there isn't any reason to change it. 
If it ain't broke...

I went with a separate /boot on a system I set up recently for a 
different reason. I had two 18GB SCSI drives available, but one has 
slightly more capacity than the other, despite the fact that they're the 
same model. (The bigger one is a more recent firmware revision.) I 
created identical swap and Linux RAID partitions on each drive, and used 
the leftover space on the bigger one for /boot. (The /boot is actually 
the FIRST partition on the bigger drive, but that's a detail.)