[lug] Installation Guidance Needed

[rm at fabula.de]

On Tue, Apr 01, 2003 at 10:23:04AM -0700, Peter Hutnick wrote:
> > On Tue, Apr 01, 2003 at 08:06:37AM -0700, Nate Duehr wrote:
> 
> >   > I figure I'll install the hard drive, configure the BIOS for it, run
> > FDISK (from a bootable Windows 98 floppy I have), and then format
> > it. But the
> >
> > Somehow i fear this won't work. The smallest IDE drives i seem to be
> > able to buy are in the 10xn Gb range. I doubt that an old 486 with  the
> > original bios will be able to deal with those.
> 
> This is no problem.  Linux does not use the BIOS (int13) for disk access. 
> WIth LILO you will need to have a boot partition that is BIOS accessible.

Yes, indeed, as soon as Linux is up and booting there should be no
problems -- but: somehow i seem to remember having major problems
with "huge" disks in old boxes, if i recall right the controller had
problems ...

> I gather that GRUB doesn't even need that.  Apparently it fits all the
> info it needs to boot the kernel into the boot sector.  YMMV.

Yes, grub is a very cool boot loader, indeed. I wish it would have better
support for BSDish OSes.

 Thanks

   Ralf