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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.mel.connect.com.au!news.syd.connect.com.au!news.bri.connect.com.au!fjholden.OntheNet.com.au!not-for-mail From: Tony Griffiths <tonyg@OntheNet.com.au> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Installation onto large IDE drives Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 16:06:35 +1000 Organization: On the Net (ISP on the Gold Coast, Australia) Lines: 46 Message-ID: <336049EB.46A6@OntheNet.com.au> References: <335E3667.1B47@saaconsultants.com> Reply-To: tonyg@OntheNet.com.au NNTP-Posting-Host: swanee.nt.com.au Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (WinNT; I) To: Dave Roberts <dave.roberts@saaconsultants.com> Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:39701 Dave Roberts wrote: > > This is probably a FAQ, but I've searched the FAQ and can't find a > reasonable answer. > > A user in my company wants to install FBSD 2.2.1 onto his P166. It's > got a 1.5 IDE hard disc, and claims that it has something like 3148 > cylinders. > > Now I have read about keeping the root partition below the 1024th > cylinder, but also that Win 95 likes to be on the first part of the > first disc. And that there can only be 4 slices per disc.(?) I think that this is a BIOS limitation, not a FreeBSD limitation. I think the "best" way to handle this sort of thing is to set the disk to LBA mode right minimises the number of 'cylinders' on the disk! > > So, does this mean that I should create 4 slices. Set the first > slice to be C: and install Win95. Use the second slice for the > FBSD root partition. The 3rd and 4th slices can then be for Win > apps, and other FBSD partitions. How does that sound? Don't get confused between 'slices' (DOS partitions) and FreeBSD partitions. Each disk slice, if it is marked as a BSD slice, can contain up to 8 (a .. h) partitions. I think that the only restriction is that the root partition has to be "a". I would create the first slice for Win95 (actually I wouldn't because I don't want anything to do with Win95!), and the second slice for BSD (all partitions). If you don't feel like having only 2 large slices, then make these smaller and define two others. Depending on what you want to do with FreeBSD, you can get by with only a few hundred meg. In fact I've installed FreeBSD on a Zip drive which only has 96 MB, however, you can't put the sources or X on this amount. I would allocate enough for 32MB root, 64 MB -> 128 MB swap depending on physical RAM and whether you're running X, and 200 MB or so for /usr and /var (I move /var -> /usr/var and create a softlink!). So all up you want about 300 -> 350 MB for FreeBSD. > Or is there a slicker way of doing this? It's really "suck it and see" territory... Tony