On Tuesday 27 November 2018 16:07:18 Riccardo Mottola wrote: > Hi Nick, > > Nick Holland wrote: > > So far, with one or two exceptions, everyone complaining about this has > > a One Big Partition disk layout. A bad idea, not suggested, and I don't > > think you will get much sympathy. > > yes of course (TM).. I won't get much sympathy, but it is the best > set-up for a dual-booting laptop it works for every OS I test and worked > until 6.3 for me. > For other set-ups I use different partitioning schemes, but I suppose in > the past twenty years or so, we all had our issues with disk layouts. > > > I know of one machine that behaves as you describe with a very modest > > (smaller than suggested) root partition, but I'm feeling very alone > > here. :D > > what is the actual size limit? from where? I wonder that I cannot even > boot the old kernel which worked.. at the previous boot! > > I cannot shuffle the partitions, I cannot even reinstall from scratch, > since I am unable to boot from an USB key with the installer image, it > crashes both the 6.4 installer image as the old 6.3.
The specific "heap full" issue that can be triggered by using a single large partition is not likely to be at fault here - if you cannot boot the ramdisk (bsd.rd/installer) for 6.3 or 6.4 from a USB key, then something else is presumably up (unless you're actually trying to load the installed kernel or ramdisk from the hard disk). > All important data is backed up, but I need to reinstall at least and > cennot even do that. Of course booting abd being able to copy a last > snapshot of my home directory would be even best, to retain my profiles. > > Should I try boot from optical media? could that help? I suppose not... > > Thanks, > > > Riccardo