Actually, this can or does happen even with BIOSs that DO support
bigger drives. Problem is, the CHS layout blows up at 8G in size, and
fdisk doesn't work around it properly.
I've spent much of the afternoon trying to figure out the work around
(don't ask me why. Just realized it is an OpenBSD issue I don't
understand yet and I should/could, so I have decided to find the
solution, even though I will probably never dual boot an OpenBSD
system. 8-). Don't have time to elaborate on it now, and I haven't
finished testing, but the short (and incomplete) version is to drop to
a shell durring install, use something like:
fdisk -c (c) -h (h) -s (s) -E wd0
where (c) (h) (s) are the Cyl, Heads and Sectors/track of the drive.
In this way, you can surpass the 16,383 cylinder limit. You can then
lay out the disk as you want, disklabel it, and hopefully boot.
NOTE WELL: The drive I have been testing on has the drive geometry
listed as 16383/16/63 and 28,229,040 sectors. Do the math, it doesn't
work out. You may well have to do your own math here. I hope to be
able to elaborate more tomorrow...
Also note that this is only relevant if you need multiple OSs on one
disk. If you don't, just say "yes" to the "use entire disk for
OpenBSD", and you don't have to worry about this at all.
"I have an elegant solution which time does not permit me to post now"
(maybe. We'll see)
Nick
(who will probably be hit by a bus this evening 8-)
Steve Shockley wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
> > Just installed OpenBSD on a home PC dual-booting with Win98...
> > Only 1 minor problem, OpenBSD doesn't seem to read the disk
> > area outside the 8GB boundary.
>
> This is common if your BIOS doesn't support Extended int13. The easiest
> workaround is to back up your data (just in case) and see if there's a
> BIOS update.
--
http://www.holland-consulting.net/
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