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From: rberesfo@compulink.co.uk (Ross Beresford)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Problem installing Minix 1
Message-ID: <memo.55215@cix.uucp>
Date: 7 Jan 91 19:54:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Lines: 24

I got the same "Panic: Not enough memory for root partition" message
when installing MINIX 1.5.

The reason I got it may not have been quite the same as Vernon's.
However, since the problems are so closely related, I think it might
be worth describing what I was doing wrong.

Like Vernon, I have an AT clone with 1 meg of memory. After reading
the MINIX installation instructions, I opted to set up /dev/hd3 as a
512K RAM disk image of the root file system. Doing this, I got the
panic message on boot up.

After looking through the code I realised that the mm distinguishes
between the 640K regular memory and 384K extended memory: it doesn't
like to allocate a block of memory across the boundary.

So the 512K of memory I was asking for was being taken out of the 640K
regular memory, where there wasn't enough available.

I'm now less greedy, and just ask for a 384K RAM disk image; this just
uses up all the extended memory, and everything works fine.

Ross Beresford
rberesfo@cix.compulink.co.uk