On Tue, 7 Apr 1998, Rob Goodwin wrote:
> > 1024 cylinders listed in your BIOS, then a small /boot partition at the
> > very start of the drive is a must.
>
> I'm not sure i understand how this works exactly.. if you have a small
> partition that only holds your kernel (or does it hold more) then how does
> it find the /etc directory with the fstab in it to know how to mount
> everything else? or is that in the kernel somehow? or maybe i
> misunderstand?
The LILO boot program loads the kernel off the /boot partition (or
wherever else you put it) using the BIOS calls (which are restricted to
<1024 cylinders). It then calls the kernel with various parameters, the
most important of which is the location of the root partition (e.g.
"root=/dev/hda3"). The kernel then handles mounting the root partition and
starting up /sbin/init, which handles the rest of the boot process
(including running the script that mounts all these /etc/fstab
filesystems). Since the kernel is not restricted by the 1024 cylinder
boundary it doesn't mind that its root partition may be above the 1024
cylinder boundary. Only the Linux Loader (LILO) cares, because it uses
the BIOS to get the kernel into memory in the first place.
Eric Lee Green [EMAIL PROTECTED] Executive Consultants
Systems Specialist Educational Administration Solutions
"We believe Windows 95 is a walking antitrust violation" -- Bryan Sparks
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