linux on old system

[Gregory Nowak]

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
> 
> 
> 
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