On Wednesday 05 January 2005 17:08, Sven Luther wrote: > On Wed, Jan 05, 2005 at 09:45:13AM -0600, Hollis Blanchard wrote: > > On Jan 5, 2005, at 5:47 AM, Sven Luther wrote: > > >On Wed, Jan 05, 2005 at 10:49:19AM +0100, Philippe Guyot wrote: > > >>>BTW, i have another question. I am trying to fix debian-installer to > > >>>create > > >>>the prep partition, but i would like to have some info on the > > >>>expected > > >>>constraints of said partition. Some tell it has to be entirely in > > >>>the first > > >>>8MB, others the first 5MB, and my powerstack has a 17MB boot > > >>>partition > > >>>right now. > > >> > > >>All I can say, it's that my boot PReP partition is the 1st and about > > >>4 MB in > > >>size (cannot size it less than 1% of the disk.....) > > >>second partition is / > > >>third is swap. > > > > > >BTW, for debian, it makes more sense to have the second partition as > > >swap, and > > >the third as /, i think, since it was decided some time back to > > >default to > > >root=/dev/sda3, and not sda2. > > > > > >>That works for me. > > > > > >Until the kernel grows beyond 4MB. > > > > The size of that partition depends on firmware limitations. I have > > definitely seen reports of systems not booting when the PReP boot > > partition was too large. I think on some systems that has even happened > > at 8MB. > > Is the problem really the size of the partition, or the space used by the > kernel. I mean we could make a 100MB partition at start, and since we just > dd the kernel to it, the kernel would be found at the start of the > partition, and the firmware probably doesn't care about the real size of > the partition, as long as it can access all the kernel data we dded to it, > no ?
I agree, see the IEEE P1275 on solinno's site. OF determines the load image length and transfers only that. I was able to verify that by dumping storage after a "load" when debugging boot process. > > Do we have some documentation of the firmware limitations ? Yes, on solinnos's site. > > > In other words, should you need more space than 4-5MB at some point in > > the future, you cannot simply make a bigger boot partition. > > 8MB would be good, 4-5MB only would probably be a bit just. > Clear. Friendly. Felipe
