Re: [vox] To Re-install or not to Re-install...That is the Question

[Marc Hasbrouck <m_hasbrouck@yahoo.coMAPSm>]

What brand of hard drive is the 7.2GB? You may have to
down load something to remvove the EZ-BIOS. Maxtor has
a utility for their drives. fdisk /mbr did not seem to
work when I had an EZ-BIOS to remove. I would
reinstall at this point as 5GB is a lot to waste. I
have only 1 8GB drive.

Marc

--- "John C. Alden" <jcalden@ucdavis.edu> wrote:
> 
> THE SETUP
> 
> Old system:
>          "cracked" several-year-old 4Mb P-90 running
> Mandrake (no CD-ROM)
>          (All ISA inside, if that gives you a
> clue...)
> New[er] system:
>          Pentium-166, 128Mb machine, using Red Hat
> 7.2, HDDs: 7.2G, 4.3Gb
>          Award BIOS is updated as far as it can be.
> 
> Re-using original disk in new system (supposedly
> formatted upon install), 
> and I'm having a disk size problem. I'm trying to
> decide whether to 
> reinstall or not.
> 
>                                  * * *
> Medium Problem #1.
> /dev/hda (Maxtor 90720D5) is supposed to be 7.2Gb
> 
> Using AUTO and LBA, it shows on boot:
>          LBA Mode 4, 7203Mb
> or, in the BIOS IDE auto-detect:
>          7197Mb.
> 
> So, 7Gb, give or take, right?.
> 
> But fdisk and Disk Druid reported it at 2.008Gb.
> Now that RH's installed, parted says 2.014Gb.
> 
> Since I had an extra 4.3Gb disk as /dev/hdc, I
> installed anyway.
> 
> Minor Problem #2.
> After the install and reboot, an EZ-BIOS (!) config
> screen appears before 
> the GRUB menu.
> Whaaa..? Where did EZ-BIOS come from? RedHat didn't
> add this, did it? 
> Naaaa. It must be left over from the previous MBR
> (old BIOS needed it, 
> perhaps).
> 
> I had thought the MBR would have been re-written by
> GRUB.
> 
> Medium Problem #3.
> If I just leave it alone, it boots into Linux fine,
> except there's 
> something missing:
> 
>          the /home partition!!!
> 
> Dang. In all the commotion, with the other custom
> RAID partitions they 
> wanted, I forgot to add in /home. Well, it's
> currently under /, but with 
> /'s 300Mb partition total (at 33% use, no user
> files), it doesn't look good 
> for the home dir expanding all that much.
> 
> 
> OPTIONS, ANYONE?
> 
> Given that there's no user data on the system yet,
> would you:
> 
> 1. leave it alone, and hope 184Mb is enough for the
>      4-5 students doing software development in
> /home?
> 
> 2. reformat all and re-do it, hoping the true size
> will appear
>      in fdisk/Disk Druid?
> 
> 3. add a new partition for /home with mkfs, etc.,
> fix /etc/fstab,
>      and ignore the EZ-BIOS apparition?
> 
> 4. Re-write the MBR and hopefully trash EZ-BIOS,
> reclaiming the space?
> (this sounds like a recipe for disaster, actually,
> given disk geometry 
> mechanics)
> 
> Thanks, and sorry for the long-winded description.
> 
> --john
> 
>
------------------------------------------------------------
> John C. Alden, jcalden@ucdavis.edu      530-754-7210
> Programmer-Analyst III                  530-304-7443
> cell
> Department of Applied Science   530-752-0360 (front
> desk)
> University of California, Davis 530-752-2444 fax
> http://www.das.ucdavis.edu/
>
------------------------------------------------------------
> 


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Send FREE video emails in Yahoo! Mail!
http://promo.yahoo.com/videomail/
_______________________________________________
vox mailing list
vox@lists.lugod.org
http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox