Bios freaks

[Karl Larsen]

Jeffrey Ross wrote:
>
>
> Matthew Saltzman wrote:
>> On Sat, 2007-08-18 at 16:49 -0600, Karl Larsen wrote:
>>  
>>> I have heard about enough about what my 1994 bios might or might not 
>>> be doing to Grub. I WAS surprised when the bios showed correct that 
>>> I do have two hard drives, one a Master the other a Slave and both 
>>> having 160GB written just like that in the bios. It is old but it is 
>>> working fine. You want to blame the problems we are having on our bios.
>>>
>>>     My FC6 where grub still works fine is using the exact same bios! 
>>> 8-)
>>>     
>>
>> But maybe in the FC6 installation, your grub and kernel are in a place
>> on the disk where they can be read by the BIOS, and in your F7
>> installation, they're not. 
>> You've got the exact same BIOS and the exact same GRUB in FC6 and F7.
>> Several people have pointed out a potential issue that you might arise
>> in those conditions that you haven't controlled for.  Why not do the
>> obvious experiment and prove them wrong beyond the shadow of a doubt.
>> That'll shut 'em up.
>>
>>
>>   
> if the BIOS is the problem where it can't read past a certain point of 
> the disk at boot time.  Couldn't you simply create a /boot partition 
> and put it in an area that the BIOS can handle?  the beginning of the 
> disk (?)??
>
    Yes. The way it seems to work is that if the BIOS has to look beyond 
a set size it will not find the kernel to boot. So If you you make a 
tiny partition of 100 MB the first on the first hard drive and put your 
/boot/grub/ there then the BIOS will always boot the kernel and be done. 
The kernel knows how to find the rest of your stuff.

    I might try this for fun one day.


-- 

	Karl F. Larsen, AKA K5DI
	Linux User
	#450462   http://counter.li.org.