[techtalk] SMP kernels and ISO images ...

[James Sutherland]

On Thu, 24 May 2001, Michael Carson wrote:
> James Sutherland wrote:
> >On Wed, 23 May 2001, Julie wrote:
> >
> >>Greets,
> >>
> >>I got my new server home last night (dual 933MHz P3s) and went
> >>to install Linux only to discover the RedHat 6.1 I have is Just Too
> >>Old to load on a 60MB disk.  It keeps bailing with "Boot partition
> >>too big" or words to that effect.  So I'm thinking about downloading
> >>something a bit more modern.
> >>
> >
> >Did you make a small /boot partition? With disks over 8Gb, you can't boot
> >reliably from a single large / partition...
> >
>    Is this true as a general statement?  I thought newer versions of
> LILO broke the 1024 cylinder limit, at least in LBA32 mode.  Should I be
> expecting sudden catastrophic failure? (gulp)

LBA32 mode probably gets round this problem, if enabled and supported -
without it, you'll be fine provided your kernel is under about 8 Gb. Which
is why you can get nasty surprises: you can take a fully working system
with a single 20Gb partition, update the kernel and reboot - and it's
dead. Why? The kernel is now above 8Gb...

VA Linux's system configurator complains if you don't have a /boot
partition of a suitable size; IMO, it's a good idea to have one anyway.
That way, even if / is hosed, you can boot into a kernel - on a journalled
FS, that's enough to recover / by replaying the journal, on ext2 you'd
need fsck on an initrd as well.

Short answer: you'll be OK as you are, but having a small /boot is a nice
idea anyway...


James.