Thanks Steve. I don't have a spair old drive on hand now. However, I ended up reinstalling the system, and mounting the second partition on /extra. Then, I got the idea to move anything I didn't need for system startup to /extra/dirname, and create a soft link to it wherever it should be found in the main tree. It works like a charm. I've moved /usr/local, /usr/src, and /home to it. Can I move anything else that the system won't need for boot up? Also, about your 2 gb hard disk ... I don't think that a 486 bios will support anything higher then 1 gb, thus your lilo problem. I know for a fact that pentium based systems (i mean the very first pentium systems) won't recognize anything higher then 2.1 gb. Greg On Mon, Jul 23, 2001 at 06:38:41AM -0700, Holmes, Steve wrote: > I have an old 486 with a 2 gig hard drive in it and Lilo won't boot the > thing at all. What I ended up doing is install an old 40 meg hard disk and > set my boot stuff there and mount the 2 gig as an entire single linux > partition. Once running, linux will see the entire drive as one partition > if you want. It got a bit complicated the way I'm doing it but it is > working good right now. I first discovered this when I upgraded the disk > drive in this thing from a 420 meg to this 2 gig and then the machine > wouldn't boot anymore. I could always boot from a floppy and then mount the > 2 gig as a new partition or I could have the boot disk actually call up the > other drive so I just kind of moved the floppy based boot system to this > little 40 meg drive as I mentioned above. Amazing but it works. > > -----Original Message----- > From: Gregory Nowak [mailto:romualt at megsinet.net] > Sent: Sunday, July 22, 2001 2:55 AM > To: speakup at braille.uwo.ca > Subject: linux on old system > > > Hi all, > > I'm preparing to reinstall Linux on my pentium 3. > I also tried to compile a c++ program > on an old 486 I've got, and got the same errors. > Whatever I screwed up, I was sure consistent about it. > Guess I'll have to compile code step by step > of the install and upgrade to kernel 2.4.6 so that I can figure out what > goes wrong where on the way. > Anyway, my question is this. > The bios of the 486 doesn't support 32-bit lba. > Consequently, the bios only sees 504 mb of the drive. > However, in this machine's past, someone had replaced > it's original drive with a 814 mb one. > Since lilo had trouble booting the entire drive, > I made the boot partition on the first 504 mb, > used 128 mb for swap, and mounted the rest under /usr/src > since source code takes up the most space (or so I thought). > Appearently, my / partion is currently 100% full, > and /usr/src/ is 93% full. > When I do the reinstall, what is the best place to mount > the second partion at? > Or, what is the best way to setup the drive so that Ican still > boot it and get the most out of its capcity? > Thanks for any help in advance. > Greg > > > > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup > > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
