On Sat, 19 Jul 2003, der Mouse wrote:

> > my i386 disk is like
> > rock% df
> > Filesystem  1K-blocks     Used     Avail Capacity  Mounted on
> > /dev/wd0a      655959    55362    567799     8%    /
> > /dev/wd0e    54908827 15478174  36685211    29%    /usr
> 
> > I would not consider a large boot area a requirement.  Is is?
> 
> Well, as I said, for i386 I understand the issues much less.  I just
> know I had a machine which wouldn't work with a single big (ca. 6G)
> partition but which worked with a small boot partition and a big root
> partition.
> 

i386 (I think this is true for NetBSD as well) has a requirement that the
boot stuff (that is loaded by the BIOS) must be within the first 1024
cylinders on the HD.

Without LBA this means the first 512MB, with LBA depends on how effective
the LBA renumbering is.

I don't know about NetBSD but recent versions of LILO are said to be able
to work around this (don't ask me how tho).

-- 
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