Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!bfmny0!tneff
From: tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Re: WD1007V + big Maxtor + DOS + UNIX
Message-ID: <15911@bfmny0.BFM.COM>
Date: 3 Oct 90 10:35:52 GMT
References: <1990Sep30.144315.27562@mccc.uucp> <15900@bfmny0.BFM.COM> <3998@segue.segue.com>
Reply-To: tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff)
Lines: 35

In article <3998@segue.segue.com> bruce@segue.segue.com (Bruce Adler) writes:
>Regarding your recipe for installing a big disk (i.e. >1024 cyls):
>
>You didn't say which flavor of unix you were installing.  

Actually I did:

In article <15899@bfmny0.BFM.COM> tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) I wrote:
>I have: ...
>	Intel UNIX System V/386 Release 3.2.2

But anyway... I don't believe this is a vendor specific issue.  Most of
the problems I was having came before the base system floppy even booted.

>                                                          Not turning on 
>the disk adapter's translation feature may have been a mistake depending 
>on which flavor and release of unix you installed.  You should be aware 
>that some releases of unix/386 won't boot a kernel if any part of it is 
>stored at or above cylinder 1024 (zero based).  You may not notice this 
>bug for a very long time because all flavors of unix/386 now seem to 
>have faster-file-gizmos which seem to always allocate blocks starting at 
>the low end of the disk.  

Right, and this limitation is documented in the Intel UNIX 3.2.2 Release
Notes.  But the installation script sets up a default root filesystem
only 24MB in size, right at the beginning of your UNIX partition.  So
/unix and any other /kernelfiles are really going to be between
cylinders 85 and about 140.  One would have to set up a single titanic
combined root+user file system over 500MB in size in order to run into
the bug!  Generally that's not a good way to set up your disk.

-- 
Technology is a way of organizing       '   '     Tom Neff
the universe so that man doesn't have    '   '    tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM
to experience it. -- Max Frisch           '   '   uunet!bfmny0!tneff