The machine was a Gateway 2000 E-4200 with a 14.1 GB IBM
drive and 128 MB memory. I originally installed Linux without any
special options or selections, and it formated my ~14 GB drive as
only 8 GB. Checking with DOS's fdisk, the BIOS setup, and looking
at the boot line:
hda: IBM-DTTA-371440, 13783MB w/462kB Cache, CHS=1024/255/63, UDMA
confirmed that I really did have a big disk but that it wasn't
formated very efficiently. The web page:
http://linux-rep.fnal.gov/howtos/mini/Large-Disk.html
was helpful in understanding the problem but not specific enough
to help me figure out a solution with my level of experience. At
Chris Green's suggestion I did the following:
linux mem=128M hda=1757,255,63
rather than the standard <enter> to begin install. The "mem=128M"
bit is because my machine also has 128M memory and Linux 2.0.35
apparently only easily recognizes up to 64 MB memory. The magic
number 1757 comes from the following. When running Linux's fdisk,
it reports:
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes
Multiplying this out for the original 1024 cylinders gives 7.8 GB,
consistent with the original Linux format size. To get the number
of cylinders with these units to use for my 13783 MB disk,
(13783 * 1024^2 bytes on disk)
1757 cylinders = --------------------------------
(16065 * 512 bytes per cylinder)
and round down.
I proceeded with the standard install, using fdisk to partition the
new drive. It warned me about the 1757 cylinders but otherwise
was quite happy to use them. The / partition (or at least a /boot
partition) should fit under 1024 cylinders, but this was no problem
in my case for a 1 GB / partition.
Near the end of the install, for the LILO Installation, it asked if
I wanted any additional boot parameters, with scary messages about
leaving this alone if I wasn't sure about what to put. I still
wasn't sure, but I specified
hda=1757,255,63 mem=128M
Note that this does not include the "linux" from the line to start
the install process for the big disk. Now it boots happy as
a clam with the message
hda: IBM-DTTA-371440, 13783MB w/462kB Cache, CHS=1757/255/63, UDMA
'df' reports a big disk, although the total blocks listed doesn't
quite agree with Used+Available. The percentages are Used/(Used+Avail).
Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on
/dev/hda2 1018329 347299 618418 36% /
/dev/hda3 12314675 14 11674873 0% /h5a
The numbers reported by fdisk are larger than these though:
Device Boot Begin Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 1 33 265041 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda2 * 34 34 164 1052257+ 83 Linux native
/dev/hda3 165 165 1757 12795772+ 83 Linux native
So perhaps some additional tweaking could get me another couple
hundred MB, but for now most of my big disk is nicely formatted
and I think I understand how to do it again in the future.
Thanks again to everyone who helped figure this out.
Stephen