128 gb boot error

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Hi everyone,

I’m new to the forum and to opensuse.
I tried to install 11.3 on my acer aspire 7530 notebook to have dual boot with xp.

I made 4 partitions: one for xp, and the three for linux were made automatically.
Before installation I got the warning that the partition wasn’t entirely below 128 gb, I installed anyway to give it a try.

The installation froze at 92% and after the laptop wouldn’t boot.

Now I’ve formatted the hard disk and installed windows on a partition leaving a free un formatted partition of 100 gb.

I would like to install opensuse there, how can I avoid the 128 gb problem?

Thank you very much for your help

#2

If you have room for a small /boot partition that is still under 128GB from the beginning of the disk (not under 128GB in size), then make that during the install.

#3

How can I check if this is possible? right now I only know that my windows partition is 140 gb and I only used 10.
Another thing is that during installation I could only create 4 total partitions. Is it possible to make more somehow?

Thanks again for your help

#4

Then there is no way but to make the Windows partition smaller, so that you can have a /boot partition under the 128GB mark. It’s a BIOS limitation.

You can get more partitions by making the last one an extended partition. But that won’t solve the 128GB problem. But it will allow you to allocate the rest of the space to more than 2 partitions.

#5

I don’t need more than 128 gb on my windows partition, if I reduce it for example to 80 gb, I should be able to install the boot loader automatically in the remaining hdd without having to create a partition just for the boot right?

But would it be better to have a separate partition just for the boot?

#6

No as a rule you do not need a separate boot partition for a normal Desktop installation.

#7

On modern BIOSes without this 128GB limitation, a separate /boot isn’t required. But you have an old BIOS so you need a separate /boot to ensure that the boot files are located under 128GB mark.

#8

I don’t buy a 128Gb limitation.
This is a fairly new laptop, manufactured 2009 or later? They’re selling 250-500Gb laptop drive.

What does the error message not entirely below the 128Gb limit mean? Later you say the Windows partition is 140Gb?

Since you’ve reinstalled Windows XP, please post output from the BIOS disk screen, what drive(s) the bios sees in your system, output from Windows XP Device Manager for your hard disk drives, if possible fdisk -l using the OpenSuse installation disk.

#9

On 2010-11-23 14:06, musacci wrote:
>
> How can I check if this is possible? right now I only know that my
> windows partition is 140 gb and I only used 10.
> Another thing is that during installation I could only create 4 total
> partitions. Is it possible to make more somehow?

Create:

1 small partition, of about 250 mega bytes (yes, no mistake, very small),
at the very start of the disk.
1 partition for windows as big as you want.
1 extended partition for the rest.

The extended partition is a container having as many logical partitions as
you want (even a hundred). In this case, it would have three linux
partitions ("/", “/home” and swap). Tell linux to use that first partition
as “/boot”, format it as ext2 (thats a “two”) and to install grub on it
(not in the mbr).

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

#10

IIRC and a cursory quick check seems to indicate

  • “old” BIOS issues mainly relate to the BIOS INT 13 barrier which is at 7.88GB. I’ve personally run into this over the years, to be absolutely certain your multi-boot won’t have a problem you need to start your boot partition in the first 7.88GB. If you make the first partition your boot partition, it can be nearly any size(much larger) because it will <start> in the first 7.88GB. Note that this is an important legacy BIOS limitation on all (even modern BIOS) which continues to this day because of backwards compatibility issues, but <modern OS> all will replace the hardware BIOS <once the OS is loaded> with a far more capable BIOS. Note though that during original OS setup and pre-boot loading that the OS BIOS is not available and is subject to the BIOS INT 13 limitation.

  • According to a little googling, the 128GB barrier apparently relates to the LBA setting in the BIOS, which is a bit surprising if true. I seem to remember it was introduced somewhere in the early 2000’s to extend the basic block allocation table (I seem to remember it was something like 512mb?). I thought the 128GB barrier had more to do with FAT32 limits or something like that… My memory is less clear on this because I never used FAT32 too much, I was using NTFS exclusively on my Windows systems and generally skipped over most FAT32 issues. Also, of course today LBA (and other extended block addressing schemes, LBA is not the only one) is the default setting in all hardware BIOS, you should never have to manually modify except on very old hardware.

Bottom Line:
Make your first partition your boot partition. Period. Or, if the manufacturer has inserted a hidden partition as the first partition, then make sure your boot partition is immediately after that.

HTH,
Tony

#11

On 2010-11-30 18:36, tsu2 wrote:
>
> IIRC and a cursory quick check seems to indicate

From a somewhat old Seagate documentation (for a Barracuda 7200.7, of
160.0_GB):

+++··································
Some systems BIOS have capacity limitations. Types that have been
identified are:

a 2.11GB or 4095 cylinder limitation
a 3.26GB or 6322 cylinder limitation
a 4.22GB or 8192 cylinder limitation
a 8.45GB Standard INT13 limitation (CHS[1024x256x63]x512)
a 33.8GB or 66,060,287 LBAs limitation
a 137.4GB or 268,435,455 LBAs limitation (28-bit limit)

and, if exceeded, may cause the system to hang during boot,
capacity reduction or it can truncate or wrap the cylinders when
auto-detect options set in the CMOS.

New INT13 Extensions and LBA mode in BIOS and FAT32 or NTFS-based
file systems are required to acheive full capacity. FAT32 file
system can create single partitions and logical drives up to 2TB.

FULL-CAPACITY solutions include third-party drive preparation
software, system BIOS update which supports LBA mode or third
party bios driven host adapters.

Windows XP Service Pack 1 and Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 with
48-bit LBA Address drivers are required for native support of
ATA (IDE) disc drives greater than 137GB.

Windows 98, Windows Millennium and Windows NT 4.x all have 137GB
native limitations supporting ATA (IDE) disc drives. Third-party
device drivers may be available from motherboard or host adapter
manufacturers for these legacy Windows operating systems.

Windows 95 FAT16 based operating systems are also limited to 8.4GB.

DOS 16-bit FAT file system cannot access more than 2.147 Gbytes per
partition.

··································+±

(warning: those are GB, not GiB).

I have the suspicion that 11.3’s grub has issues with the last limitation
above (the 28 bit limit), on systems where 11.2 did not have it. Some
regression. Remember that the 1.x grub version we use is heavily patched my
Novell, perhaps they forgot or had to remove one.

> Note though that during original OS setup
> and pre-boot loading that the OS BIOS is not available and is subject to
> the BIOS INT 13 limitation.

Yes, grub has to use the bios services to load itself, at least stages 1
and 1.5.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

#12

Thx Carlos,
That’s good, concise stuff I didn’t find in the morass of various Google results.

So, it seems that although the OP didn’t actually mention the BIOS INT 13 issue, it probably would be even if an error wasn’t returned… Then in addition to observing that hardware limitation there really might be an additional 128gb limitation specific to the OS BIOS.

At least, that’s the way I’m reading the situation…

Tony