[CLUE-Talk] Question about FIPS

[Tom Poindexter]

I'll add to what Grant said:

FIPS - gives you the chance to save your existing partition and FAT tables
onto a floppy.  Read the instructions and do it!  (I've *never* had a problem
with FIPS, but I like to play it safe.)

WinME - I just bought a new machine a few weeks ago, and it came with 
Windows Millennium Edition.  WinME has hidden the ability to boot into
'Safe' mode, and you can no longer 'Exit to DOS'.  Instead, you must 
create a boot floppy by going to Control Panels -> Add/Remove Programs ->
System programs and look for the 'create boot floppy'.  Boot your WinME 
using the boot floppy before running FIPS.

1024 cyl lilo limit - The Lilo shipped with Redhat 6.2 is a slightly older
version from what is current.  That version cannot boot Linux if the boot
files are located on the disk beyond the 1024th cylinder.  You should split
your FAT32 partition below 1024 cylinders (fips will tell your which
cylinder you're splitting on.)  When running the Linux install, use
fdisk or the disk druid screen to delete the second FAT32 partition created
by FIPS, create a '/boot' partition of 20-30mb or so below 1024, create a '/' 
(root) for Linux, and a Linux swap partition.  You might want to create an 
'extended' partition for the Linux swap and possibly additional Linux and/or
FAT32 partitions.

There is a newer version of Lilo (21.6.1) that supposedly can boot beyond the
1024 cylinder limit by using LBA mode, but I was not able to get this to
work.  Each time I tried booting with that version of lilo, nothing would
get booted (except for the Linux boot floppy I made during Linux installation.)
I only tried installing Lilo into the boot partition, and not the MBR, so
that may have worked.  Instead, I took the safer route of making a /boot
partition below 1024.

Read all for the HOWTOs concerning partitioning and booting!!!
http://www.linuxdoc.org

Good luck.
 

-- 
Tom Poindexter
tpoindex at nyx.net
http://www.nyx.net/~tpoindex/