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New LILO Breaks 1024-Cyl Limit
slambo writes: "Everyone's favorite bootloader, LILO has been updated to remove the 1024-cylinder limit. LILO now supports disks up to 2Tb. "
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Its funny one of the first boot loaders (and most popular) is one of the last to get this functionalty. How long has LBA, Large > 512MB drives been out anyway?
Nothing much. Watching the game, drinking a Guinness.
You read that 2TB as 2T TB => 27 TB. The 31337 4R3 M3551N6 W17H UR M1N|) d00d!!!!11!!!
For one thing, newbies will have less chance of installing linux only to reboot and to nothing happen. I know that Redsplat and related distros have gotten around this by creating a 10-20 megabyte boot partition. Other distros limit you to either figuring out how to do the mini boot-partition yourself, or keeping the / partition located entirely under the 1024 cylinder. This means you can't have one huge-ass partition with most everything in it.
/boot partition and using
:)
Also you can now install new kernels much easier in RH and it's cousins by eliminating the small
%make bZlilo
after compiling your new kernel.
Good for us lazy folks
Why isn't this story posted under "Boot Sector Viruses" where it belongs?
I had been using LILO, but I recently switched to GRUB. It doesn't have the 1024 cylinder problem
/etc/fstab from the boot prompt
and more importantly
o Once it is set up you don't have to tell
it about new kernels if you don't want to
because it can
o Read ext2/msdos/minix/... filesystems
natively which means you can boot any
file. This also means you can
o cat
and it will search you partitions for
the file and cat it and
o Most importantly it has file/disk/partition
completion from the boot prompt.
o It can even do a nice menu (that you can
always escape to a prompt from).
o As it is a GRand Unified Boot loader, you
can also boot 95/98/NT/*BSD... and
o Use the same command line from inside
your OS to try it out and set things up.
I liked it so much, I made an rpm so I could easily put it on all of my computers. Beware, it is still in alpha/beta.
LILO, no more...
The excrebyte. Roughly a sh1tload of storage.
to the world of Linux software. See, no linux software in the world has a version number of more than .96. It's not possible. See:
.999.
lim(version->1)GPL_ware=$$$
Since $ is a sin, that all must be under
I'm using BootEasy from FreeBSD, this loader also can boot beyond 1024 cylinder (I had to change Makefile and recompile it). For me this loader much easier to use than LILO, because it supports many disks, doesn't have any config file and can remember last boot choice. But the real problem is not loader, but operating systems themselves. For example, W2K cannot find swap file after moving its partition beyond 1024 cylinder. FreeBSD kernel loader btx do not use int13 extensions - the only way to break limit. Until last time linux kernel also had problems with this. Anyway, any progress in this area is good thing :)
LILO is a two-stage bootloader like most of the bootloaders for x86 systems. The first stage is approximately 500 bytes that sit in the MBR or the boot block of the partition you put it on. The second stage is in the file /boot/boot.b
One big problem with LILO is that it won't boot your system if you've moved the kernel to a different set of blocks on the hard drive. GRUB and other more intelligent boot loaders actually understand the filesystem and can be told to blindly load a previously specified filename, and many have a command line interface that allows the user to find a different kernel to load at boot time.
The best solution would be to rebuild the underlying methods by which PCs are created. A 512 byte MBR is an artifact of the original IBM PC, which is nearing it's 20th anniversary. BIOSes of today are built upon legacy after legacy, even though we have a few more modern operating systems out there today (like Linux, HURD, and the *BSDs. Ok, NT too..) that would much rather have a fully contiguous block of memory rather than the chunkified model that evolved along with the PC.
Anyway, I'd be really happy if someone decided to make MBR's be 100kB in size or at least something a *little* larger than 512 bytes. Or heck, the BIOS itself could be redesigned to understand filesystems and kernels..
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
I once posted about how we could get anti-aliasing support in to Linux quickly, commenting that we just need something that works. A BSD guy quickly slammed me for being a typical Linux user who just wants things to work.
We can't settle. Don't we want our OS to be the best? We won't get there by telling people things like "LILO is good enough! Leave it alone!"
My coworker makes fun of my bsd usage, I make fun of his "redcrap".
He says "you've just got kernel envy cuz linux has a bigger kernel"
Welp its not that size that matters, its how you boot it:)
I think LILO uses large numbers for version numbers, like 21-4 and such. Apparently the guy submitting LILO updates to freshmeat is saying that 21 is the minor version number, not the major version number.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
I checked the Debian changelog for LILO, and it looks like they are going to go ahead and put it in potato. Yay! :^)
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
The FreeBSD boot loader has been able to do this for ages!
Of course it can also read UFS, FAT, and do PXE booting..
Run faster!
I've recently had a very frustrating experience trying to get FreeBSD 4.0 working on a large drive. I'll share it here because it might be useful for others. It also helps to have another FreeBSD machine around already installed...
/boot/boot[12] and /boot/loader (mail me if you want my copies). There is a patch for LBA support in /boot/loader available in the FreeBSD-hackers archive. I sure hope this patch makes it in to FreeBSD 4.1, because installing without it is a real pain.
/boot/boot[12] and /boot/loader into your newly installed partition.
First, you have to patch and rebuild
Once you have these new versions, go ahead and install FreeBSD normally. But, before you reboot, goto the shell screen (ALT-F4) and copy your new versions of
Then, you need to update the FreeBSD slice with boot1 and boot2: disklabel -r -B ad0 (assuming this is drive C:).
Finally, you need to update boot0 to know about the LBA extensions (it calls this packet mode). Use boot0cfg -v -o packet ad0.
Good luck, and I *really* hope that this makes it into FreeBSD 4.1, because it's a pain in the butt for those of use installing into partitions over 8Gb...
-Dom
All I can say is, "it's about time!" I've had many a situation where LILO puked on the drives installed. This is great news!
And guess who's lost his three NT boot disks?
You need the boot disks if you want to change any of the files used in the initial boot (e.g. ATAPI.SYS) , or if you need any other files from a newer service pack than your CD. I believe there is a setup.log file similar to the one on the Emergency Repair Disk that you can modify so that specify alternative locations for files.
"Why the f*****g hell couldn't they have made updated install CD's of NT 4.0 with all the service packs included. "
;)
I believe that it's called an MSDN subscription - it gives you updated versions of ALL their software
I can't help being pedantic... 1^15 bytes = 1 byte :-)
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
Hey! I was hoping somebody would bring up XOSL. Has anybody tried it? Waddaya think?
An idiot, maybe. Environmentally conscious, definitely.
I know you're being funny, but if your post is taken literally, I'd like to point out that I use Linux as my desktop at work and I shutdown my computer everyday. Therefore, for me, I DO boot with LILO everyday. Well, at least every working day.
What game are *you* watching...?
This is Interesting. The x86 world is still playing catch up to us Alpha Linux users.
On Alphas we have no such limitations on disks/boot loaders.
Also on Alpha Linux we can now use up to 2TB of RAM!
Now what we all need is EXT3 so we can have > 2GB filesystems and files!
Hmm I probably shouldn't come over then. I have a death metal band and we have a song where we jump around (trying to look 'artistic') and yelling "DEE! SELECT! DEE! SELECT!" and then during the chorus (to break it up) we do basically the same thing, but yell "DEB! IAN! DEB! IAN!"
You know the 1024-cylinder limit wasn't really *that* bad. You had to create one more partition than usual. I'm glad it's gone too, but I've never heard anyone really complain about it.
GRUB rocks totally and without any doubt - more flexible than LILO too. LILO looks so boring, too... GRUB has a colored full-screen boot menu (though colors are optional, of course =)
This was just one reason why I switched from LILO to GRUB - Dammit, I've never booted my home machine just to see that utterly coooooool boot menu! =)
Now that this is done, maybe the LILO
developers can remove the size limitations that
LILO can load? Or is that a problem with the
Linux kernel design?
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Weird. I've never actually run into any trouble with lilo. On a 6GB disk I have a swap partition, 3GB Win95 partition, and 3GB (roughly) linux partition, in that order. Never had a single problem. Am I missing something?
I chose loadlin too. IMO, anyone who has a linux+win setup is much better off with loadlin. It's simple and it's safe and, until now, it had the advantage that cylinder limits were neatly sidestepped. It does add a couple of seconds to the boot time, I suppose, but does anyone really mind that?
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
I rather thought the +-21 and +-24 terms which are roughly as you have them, came from Finnish.
Steve
i think the article said *2* TB, chief.
GNU GRUB (the GRand Unified Bootloader) can be downloaded from:
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/
-Ed Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.
In place of using dselect to figure out package names, I'd recommend getting to know apt-cache. In particular, apt-cache search pattern is your friend.
About the only thing dselect is needed for anymore is dealing with optional packages.
kilo-
mega-
giga-
tera-
peta-
exa-
Although peta- and exa- aren't legitimate SI prefixes.
This person does have a point, despite an inability to make it graciously. It is rather unseemly to whine about not gettng free improvements to a free operating system on a schedule that suits you instead of the people actually doing the work, and it's by no means the first time that this attitude has reared its unseemly head.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Beh... you know what I mean. :) How about "Most linux computers, when they boot, boot with Lilo."
Better?
---
I am a bit confused as to what you people are talking about with this 1024 cylinder limit. I just installed Mandrake Linux on an 8.6 gig drive with zero problems, and the drive states that it has something in the neighborhood of 15000 cylinders. Maybe I just got lucky and avoided it by making a 26 meg /boot partition.
Okay. This was always like the second biggest problem I had with explaining how to install linux to people. After I clue them in about partitioning, you have to explain Lilo... and they are always like "huh? what do you mean boot sector" or "put the kernel below 1024 cylidners" Anyway, this should shave a bit off of the "hard to install" block, I'm sure.
---
what about its about time? i've never heard of this feature. i think you mean it's
Only a very limited set of realmode code, mostly used to switch to protected mode.
GRUB understands the common filesystems, ext2, one of the BSDs, vfat in seperated protected mode modules.
No more rerunning lilo after recompiling a kernel.
Boot menu support.
readline compatible commandline editing capability in case you need it.
Much cleaner code inside.
Shipped by NetBSD (not sure) and OpenLinux eDesktop 2.4.
where are those needed? isn't the nt cd bootable.
Many PCs can't boot from CD-ROM...
NTLDR is great (esp. if you want to triple-boot between Win9x, WinNT, and J. Random Linux Distro). However, I've had one headache with it that doesn't reflect on NTLDR as much as it reflects on the x86's bletcherous boot-scheme (perhaps this will be done away with in the IA64 days?). Let's say that you just downloaded the newest whiz-bang kernel patch, have folded it in, and just ran "make lilo". You'll be forced to boot from floppy unless you remember to: /dev/hda5). Forget to do this, and lilo will have `issues' finding itself on the next boot. Now, the obvious question is: "Why use both NTLDR and LILO?". Two words: "beta kernels". I've always got "known-good" and "previous" rules in my lilo configuration file so that I can rollback to either the last kernel I ran, or whatever was the last kernel that I ran from the "stable" tree. I've found no clean-and-easy way to preserve this cover-my-rear mechanism using only NTLDR. So, yeah, NTLDR kicks butt if you need to dual-boot NT and Linux, but watch out for those kernel upgrades! PS: Not having the PRE tag sux when you're trying to illustrate a command-line. :(
dd if=/dev/hda5 of=/drive_C/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1
(assuming you've installed Lilo in the first sector of
Pining for the days when The Glorious MEEPT!!! graced SlapDash with his wisdom.
I'm using XOSL, which not only looks very nice, but is rather customizable and now also includes/supports the Ranish Partition Manager. Alas, it's rather big, so it either needs a tiny partition for itself or has to be installed on a DOS partition.
I love dselect. It worked fine for me, and I use it about as often as apt-get.
But, I'm a new Debian user. Usually I can guess the name of the package that I want, and just type apt-get install netscape or something like that. Sometimes I don't know what the name of the package I want is, so I use dselect to hunt it down.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
of course ymmv.
--
"What comes next in the size measurement after terabyte?"
/~esr/jargon/html/entry/quantifiers.html.
petabyte.
See http://www.tuxedo.org
-rozzin.
Shit, I just spent a bunch of my time fighting Partition Magic bugs a few days ago getting things right for a /boot within the first 1024.
Wish this story had run before that...
--
This is nothing new, the MacOS have been able to use 2 TB volumes since mid-1995 with the release of PCI Macs or any Macs that came with System 7.5.2 or newer. Of course using 7.5.2 and HFS the Allocation Block Size would be a little over 32 MB. So if there was a text file that only consisted of a new line character, the file would be 32MB. Sort of pointless for anyone with lots of small files. Of course this has been fixed by HFS+. And yes, in MacOS 9.0 files are limited to 2 TB and not 2GB.
Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
Haha, I've done the same thing, except with two versions of redhat. Came up with the same stragety!
Your Momma's so fat she makes emacs look like nano!
Whaddayamean inferior? Bigger must be better! :-)
How could it otherwise be that M$ OS gets bigger and everyone keeps buying the upgrade
The fix for 32GB disks was done earlier than
/scratch1bak
2.2.15 pre 6 or 7.
Here is my 2.2.14 kernel machine with a 40G
disk on it:
alfven [2] uname -a
Linux alfven 2.2.14 #3 SMP Fri Apr 7 16:48:33 PDT 2000 i686 unknown
alfven [3] df
Filesystem 1k-blocksUsedAvailableMounted on
/dev/hdb1 38005262 5960733 30043635
HotDamn!
The LILO problem has plagued me for years, which is why I switched over to LOADLIN in the first place. With the kernel uptimes I typically get, there's no need for me to have a "quick boot" sequence. I keep a floppy disk with DOS (dooh!) in each floppy drive with my kernels on it.
Totally safe, and you don't have to worry about Windows screwing up your boot sector.
In fact, I loaded my kernel images onto the Windows partition so they could be loaded faster (and redundancy for the floppy).
GRH
The version number on Freshmeat is 0.21 and the version included in Mandrake 7.0 (not 7.1) is 0.22. Does that mean the 0.22 version in Mandrake 7.0 has this functionality? Is it some sort of beta or something?
I was running lilo 0.23.something or other for a while now to boot my 30GB EIDE drive. It should also be noted that this is NOT the official LILO. This is a patch against the "offical" LILO
That's exactly how you avoided it. The problem wasn't with filesystem sizes, it was with where the kernel itself was stored. Prior to this update, it's always had to exist somewhere below the 1024th cylinder of the disk. Since it lives in /boot, creating a small boot partition has been the workaround, which you implemented unknowingly. :-)
Regards,
-BK
Chemical Blog
The problem is still present. It is just transparent. It was never really a problem. just put 'append hd="cyl,hd,sec"' at the top of lilo.conf. problem solved. They have just made the stupid^H^H^H^H^H^Hproblem transparent.
PimpSmurf
Stupid people do stupid things... Smart people outsmart each other... --System of a Down
I use LILO, but one must be aware of the potential vulnerabilities that give ROOT ACCESS to anyone who can acces the console.
When you see LILO appear, press TAB too see the image names. Then type the image name to boot followed by 'single' and BOOM! you have single-user root access to the box. This can be restricted via lilo.conf with the 'restricted' keyword and the 'password=' keyword.
The other way (if single user is restricted) if to use init=/bin/bash rw appended to the image name. On most linux systems, the default image name is 'linux', so one would use:
linux single OR
linux init=/bin/bash rw
If you have console access, getting root access is just 13 keystrokes away (including ENTER). All this thanks to LILO!
Also, check out XOSL at http://www.xosl.org/.
Think dual booters, not servers... And there you have the answer. In fact I don't dual boot but I typically have about 3-4 different OS'es (or installs) on my machine, just for fun :)
I have installed linux at the end (last 4-5 gigs) of my 30G hard drive, which already had W2K and W98. It's on a logical partition. According to SUSE manual, W2K boot loader can boot linux but usually not from logical partition; it didn't work for me. My question is, if I now add LILO, will it be able to launch ALL THREE operating systems? I seem to remember it can boot from logical partitions, and I know it can boot W98, but can it boot W2K?
I'm no boot loader guru by any means, but GRUB doesn't have that limitation. I suppose that was it's main advatage over LILO. Now if Caldera would only switch back...
I use lilo myself, but does anybody know of some alternative boot loaders? Awhile ago I used a pretty slick commercial one that was configurable at boot time and had an n-curses style menu... but it was rather commercial. I've seen some opensourced ones that do similar things, but I haven't the guts to blow away my MBR just like that. :) Any recommendations?
See you, space cowboy...
Well, could be that you forgot uninstalling your distro's original lilo package... /bin, (/sbin in this case) but manually compiled packages with ./configure end up in /usr/local/bin by default so you're using the same old lilo because /sbin is before /usr/local/bin in $PATH and the old binary is found before the new one. Try using an absolute path when invoking lilo, like /usr/local/[s]bin/lilo...
If so, distro pkgs binaries usually stay in
Hope this helps.
--
"The crux of the biscuit is the Apostrophe(*)" - FZ
--
"The crux of the biscuit is the Apostrophe(*)" - FZ
Like many of you out there, I dual boot to Windows. I have my reasons for doing this, the politics of which I don't want to get into here. Because I really couldn't be bothered to set up a separate /boot partition and didn't care much for LILO's super-userfriendly interface, I decided to dump it and go for loadlin instead.
I let windows (the DOS part at least) handle the booting: In my config.sys and autoexec.bat I've set up a boot menu that lets me pick between Windows, Linux, and Linux-runlevel 1. The Linux options run loadlin which boots from a kernel I have sitting in C:\LINUX. When it boots, a nice menu comes up letting me pick between the three, and after 15 seconds it defaults to Linux. Beats LILO's cryptic boot-up prompt any day. The single user mode is really nice to have for when I fsck up my system (happens once every 6 months).
I would go with LILO on a Linux-only box, but for my setup, this works much better, especially when other people want to use the computer and want to run windows.
--C
It's only software!
Right now I only have linux installed on my home system, however I have tried FreeBSD on some other systems and I do like it. I was considering putting both FreeBSD and Linux on my home system, but I was wondering about boot loaders. I am pretty sure I can use LILO to boot FreeBSD but what about using BootEasy instead to boot both Linux and FreeBSD. I looked at the freebsd manual online and from what I gathered it looks like in order to boot Linux I have to keep LILO installed but on the boot sector of my ext2 partion instead of the MBR of the drive. Then if you install BootEasy you can choose your ext2 partion from a menu which then goes to the boot sector which which runs LILO which then in turn loads Linux. Now the thing that would be nice is if there was someway to rid myself of LILO completely and have BootEasy the linux kernel directly. My question is does version 4.0 of FreeBSD have a version of BootEasy that supports direct booting of the Linux kernel, or is LILO on the boot sector still necessary. The nice thing would to be to have a loader that could directly load any BSD or Linux without the need for LILO anywhere, and without the need to rerun LILO or any other program to update the boot sector or MBR after a kernel recompile. The loader should just go find the kernel on the partition no matter where it is. I believe this is what the GRUB loader does. One last question. After a recompile of a FreeBSD kernel, does the system require you to update BootEasy in any way or does it just read the UFS partition to find the new kernel? From what you said it sounds like it does the second which is a nicer solution. As I said it would be great if BootEasy could do this with a ext2 partition and Linux kernel as well.
Right.
That's why larger harddisks might have 63 heads.
I never opened one of those yet, but judging on the physical geometries I kind of doubt, that there are so many in it.
It's converted in the controller to match the actual position of the data stored on the harddisk.
--- If OS were buildings, then the first woodpecker to come around would erase 95 % of civilization.
So now I can setup LILO to boot more than 1023 different OSes. With earlier versions, this would not have been possible, because you cannot split cylinders.
Wow, this is great. =:-)
(Sorry, couldn't resist)
--- If OS were buildings, then the first woodpecker to come around would erase 95 % of civilization.
To that ;-)
Have a Happy.
I've had to explain this to my wife a dozen times. First, a tax writeoff is only a reduction in your total tax liability. For instance, if you pay $100 for a piece of software you may be able to lower your taxbase by $100 thus saving that percent (say if you pay a 20% tax then .2($100)= $20 savings).
Second, most businesses will purchase the commercial version of the software with a support contract(See RedHat, LinuxCare, TurboLinux, etc...) So from a TCO standpoint the initial capital outlay for acquiring the software is lower and in most cases the cost of support is lower.
Further, the true advantages to Linux are that updates to the software are free and the company has the ability to hire third party developers/vendors to customise the software. I can tell you from a factual standpoint that MS really makes us pay for each install and update on our NT network. Then you have to pay again every time the damn thing crashes. I see the BSOD twice a day like clockwork and all MS does is say reinstall SP5. We are stuck with our current software configuration because any attempts at updating have resulted in massive crashes. So here we are using Office 97, MSIE 4.0, and NT 4 indefinitely until the big boys decide that another option like Linux is more viable. By the way MS is hooking us up by dropping support for NT4 ASAP.
Any drive over 2.1 gigs probably has this problem. At least, all the drives I've owned over 2.1 gigs have this problem, and I have to create a separate /boot partition.
Finally. This has been one of the biggest headaches I've encountered with lilo. Of course, with a little ingenunity, you can shoehorn lilo into almost any hard disk, but some of the methods used are quite unorthodoxed.
:)
(This means now that I can finally get my friend to try out Linux again. XFree 4, new Lilo, now just as long as it doesn't lock up when it detects his mouse, and he's set
your?
AP has cracked down on the Elian Wazzup parody, the two sites that had it: geocities.com/elian_true and newgrounds.com/portal/uploads/266_elian.swf have taken it off for fear of legal pressures from AP. Anyone know of alternate sites, or anyone download it for an ftp server??? -me
The problem was having LILO boot off of something that is higher on the disk than the 1024th cyl. If you're only booting linux, this should be no problem, but if you're a newbie, and you have your Windows partition that is 13GBs, your / partition will definatley be above the 1024 limit. This enables LILO to boot off of root partitions that are located higher than 1024 cyl.
Tax deductions count against earnings. So TCO for linux is still lower amongst dotcoms.
My suggestion would be to e-mail the author(s) and ask
I've been happily using the Grub for quite a while now... Just this past weekend I upgraded to the most recent version, which finally fixed the problem I was having loading an initial ramdisk.
Adam
Grub doesn't have to be run on new kernel images, understands ext2, ufs, fat, (iso9660?)... Can ls any directory, has file name completion, can boot FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Hurd, can chainload almost any other OS... No need to have an intelligent firmware either.
Adam
Well, MILO is a little more than "a boot loader"... it's more accurately a scaled back version of Linux used to boot Linux. Now, if my Alpha had enough ROM to hold the kernel image...
That really sucks about your story not getting approved. Must've been a huge blow to your ego.
Now I can finally dual boot to windows 3.1. Yay!
Feh.
Free at last! Free at last! Lord Almighty, I'm Free at last! HipNerd
Hipnerd
What comes next in the size measurement after terabyte? I kinda remember it was excabyte (sp?) but can someone correct me (and possibly expand on things beyond that level) ?
Wheeeee
You can easily achieve more than 7.8gb via setting up the drive in another NT installation beforehand.
Further, Windows 2000 doesn't have the INT13 limitation of 1024 cylinders.
Assuming you have another [DOS/Win9x/NT] machine at your disposal, you can create new bootdisk with \i386\setup /OX.
/? sometime; there're quite a few helpful options.
Try \i386\setup
Time to see how many OS's I can fit on 40+gig drives....
Remember that there are other bootloaders such as GRUB. It already has broken this limit a long time ago, and it has _so_ much functionality, eg:
...
Reads ext2fs (there's even a cat command!)
Loads HURD
Can load a kernel by TFTP (I think)
Nice menu interface
See the website for a more complete analysis.
Not to mention, of course, that it's a mouse-driven, GUI bootloader that is not only pretty, but GPL-ed.
There was a message on enabling packet mode by default in the -current list, and most of this stuff will be MFC'd for 4-stable
marotti.com
this is incredible!!!
i always thought that the lilo limit was one of the biggest bottlenecks to a windows user learning linux, and now it's resolved! points for the developers!
YES!!!!!!!!!! =)
the floppy thingy can be done much better:
from my lilo.conf:
other=/dev/fd0
label=floppy
unsafe
this will not check the floppy when you run lilo and will boot from it fine.
I don't know how many of you had trouble running dual boot machines because of that limit, but it gave me fits on at least one computer. It was the first machines I tried to install linux on. I thought that the limitation was stupid then and I still think that it's stupid. Glad to see it changed.
Environmentalists are their own worst enemy. ~tricklenews.com
But I thought your 27TB Crystaline drive presented a 1024 cylinder image on boot? Really we all seem to be too PC centric in our thinking.
Vista, the single biggest argument for Desktop Linux! It doesn't "Just Work"(TM).
True.
True.
WHAASAAAAAAP
I stuck it on my server after the geocities mirror went down, just in case.
elian.swf
I don't know about grub, but the FreeBSD boot loader has the 1024 problem.
He who knows not, and knows he knows not is a wise man
Hmmm. At the current exponential rate of drive growth, that ought to last us for about 2 years?
TangoChaz
--------------------
TangoChaz
--------------------
Wise men talk because they have something to say, fools because the
If someone gets access to the console, they don't need root access. They can TAKE YOUR HARD DISK WITH THEM. Or boot from a floppy, unplug your machine, take an axe to it....
That's why, when this came up on BUGTRAQ, it was basically dismissed.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Is it possible to install LILo prior to the actual install of the distro in order to take full advantage of this?
I'd like to be able to use more than 2 gigs when i begin the install, but if i'm on a clean HD, how do i use say, 5 gigs for / and go from there?
Now i've got some insperation to get my MB mounted back in the case, set it all up, download the new lilo, and slap on Mandrake 7.1
No more boot partion, just 2 gigs for winblows, 4gigs for games, and 24 gigs for linux. Now i can finally check out the Rieser (sp?) File System. Good god, i've got that warm and tingly feeling.....
....oops, thats my coffee
If I recall correctly, MILO doesn't even bother itself with this and just grabs about a meg and a half of memory and refuses to let go, come hell or reboot.
Does anyone know what is holding GRUB from being released? (ie, what is still alpha about it?) According to the information posted, It seems to me that LILO doesn't compete.
I need a TiVo for my car. Pause live traffic now.
I mailed the grub list. Here is the response:
(slightly edited for context)
From: Christopher Kailden
Subject: Information on GRUB
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 12:35:22 -0700 (PDT)
> What is keeping GRUB in alpha?
Please take a look at my past mail in the archive:
here
> Recently the Slashdot community was debating the advantages and
> disadvantages of LILO, and GRUB was recommended as a
> viable alternative. I am wondering what GRUB is still
> trying to accomplish before going public.
There are also some remaining problems, which may affect
beginners. For example, Gordon who is the chief maintainer of this
project is considering if the LBA support bitmap check should be
disabled by default. LBA is one of the nightmares in PC, so we need
more time to determine what is the Right Thing.
The very thing that you should take into account is, however, that
GRUB is not only a replacement with LILO. I know some Linux-side
people presume that GRUB is a Linux loader which is maybe better than
LILO, but GRUB has many other aspects. For most of us, it is very
important how useful GRUB is for OS development. If you read the
document carefully, you can see how many features GRUB has and then
that most of the features are not very useful for "ordinary" users.
Okuji
I need a TiVo for my car. Pause live traffic now.
That version of lilo was available April 13. I downloaded it a week ago and have had it triple-booting my 20GB disk for several days now. Jeez, this news story is sooo last week.
You can never equivocate too much.
This is what I hate so intense about Microsoft. Why the fucking hell couldn't they have made updated install CD's of NT 4.0 with all the service packs included.
I can see that this is not an option for them now that Win2k is out and all, but my guess is this will not happen with Win2k either, same old lame service packs. This is actually increasing the TCO of the installation of Win2k because you have to spend time to install all SP's.
Just imagine if RedHat 6.2 was only available as a service pack that you absolutely HAD to install over RedHat 6.1.
This alone is good reason to use Linux. It's plain old bad service by MS
I think "separate /boot partitions" was meant as being separate from the root partition, something inside the 1024 cyl limit.
I actually had a problem with it earlier... bought a 27 gig hard drive. I wanted to have 8 gigs for Linux and the rest for Windows... keep all my mp3's and other random files on a Windows partition... well, it wouldn't let me. So I made a 7.5 gig Windows partition, a couple ext2, and another FAT32. Well, I screwed it all up, of course, and ended up losing a whole lot of data somehow. Eventually I just threw my old 8 gig drive back in there and put Linux on that and Windows on the 27GB... got it working, but it really sucked. That was about 2 months ago... not as bad as the other guy who got everything working 3 days ago, but I didn't like it.
"Let me open these blinds so the snipers can see in." - Kevin Giffhorn
My life just got much simpler. Or rather, it will be once I figure out how to install linux then set up lilo.
Anything that reduces the amount of fiddling I have to do with those wacky-ass DOS-style partitions is a good thing.
---
Dammit, my mom is not a Karma whore!
Indeed, the newbies shall be helped tremendously by this much needed improvement. I can say this with certainty because I was recently one of those newbies who was baffled by the limitation - which was quite a pain to work around, not knowing the ins and outs of the OS. Kudos to the programmers for improving on The OS!
I have been using the new (beta) version since Feburary, and it works great. I boot my system from 13 GB in on a 27 GB disk!
about fucking time!
Thank you for this collective thought, that we all find LILO the best bootloader! And am not even talking about other operating system, just about MILO (alpha linux loader for arc bios). What's next? Everyone's favourite webserver Apache gets an update?
EDD BIOS was 1995
From: John Reiser - April 26th 2000, 12:43 EST Source: Freshmeat.net
"The Enhanced Disk Drive BIOS extensions were available in mid 1995. See http://www.phoenix.com/techs/specs.html # edd2c.pdf . My AMIBIOS from 1996 has them. At Sept.1998 wrote a MasterBootRecord using them (choose partition, with about 40 bytes of user-selected names), and a 1024-byte ext2 boot loader that looks up the kernel in the directory structure (no 'map' file!). See ftp://ftp.teleport.com/pub/users/jreiser . Although EDD extends to 2TB, the (E)IDE interface supports only 128GB."
I know this will make me sound like an absolute ass, but I have a question. I'm looking into getting a 27.6 gig hd, and putting two partitions on there each about half the size(Linux & win200). I know nothing about Lilo and so I don't want to have to fool with reinstalling it and everyting. Is it possible to have This working as long as I put Linux on the first past of the HD?
So much for my new 3-TB hard drive.
Finaly no more need to create partitions below just for LILO. :))))
its 2 terabits not 2 terabytes
Go you Huskies.
You mean I still can't boot from my 7-exabyte drive w/out patitioning?
You're CW translation skills stink!
--- Speaking only for myself,
Now if only i could afford that 2TB disk...
--
#nohup cat
I managed to fluke an 8Gb boot Partition on NT by partitioning first with efdisk
The plural of computer mouse is mouses, mice or meece?
You're completely correct, this is very cool. For example, next time I want to install Linux on my Windows 98 machine, I won't have to mess around with moving the Win98 partition and risk moving the (Win98) boot section out of loading range (1024 cyl.). I can just append Linux to the end of the FAT32 partition.
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
If it is a parody, isn't it protected by free speech laws?
GAG IS THE BESTEST BOOT LOADER IN THE WHOLE WORLD. GO TO FRESHMEAT AND SEARCH FOR IT. IT'S REALLY GOOD. FIRST POST, FREAKS!
Why do I keep typing pythong?
Yup - unless, of course, you have a 64-bit file system (insert shameless BeOS plug here...)
---------------------------------
---------------------------------
Visit
You're off topic. LILO now supports booting from anywhere on a disk within 2 TB.
Can you do that with that famous OS of yours, he?
NT4.0 can definately not do it.
BTW, I've tried out your holodeck version 0.15, but the pain simulation was a bit too much. Can you add the ability to adjust the thresholds to your next version? Thanks
Only 27TB?
One thing that bugs me is that LILO doesn't have an option to force it to use my lilo.conf. So when you, say, install BSD, you have to boot into linux after the install, edit the lilo.conf, run lilo, and reboot, instead of being able to do it before installing. Also, a thing I like to do is have an other=floppy, so I can boot off of a floppy without having to change my BIOS setup. But to con lilo into this, you have to insert a bootable floppy before running it. And I couldn't get this trick to work with a cdrom drive.
Yiiiiipeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!
This was the main reason I wouldn't adopt Linux as my OS of choice. With the price of terabyte hard drives falling, this is a must for Linux to make it to the desktop. Now all the Win9x-ers can move their pr0n and pirated mp3s to Linux...
P.S. "F" Dr. Dre
Let me get this straight. Is it a function of the boot loader or the OS whether it can be booted above the 1024th cylinder? I've just ordered a 30GB drive... will I be able to re-install NT above 1024 and boot it using LILO? I bet the NT setup program (I have an SP1 NT Workstation disk) can't handle the installation tho.
There is a way of doing this. (ALA OS/2 Boot Manager)
This requires that a boot loader partition usually about several KB to beinstalled in the system as the first partition. This boot partition contains the remainder of the boot loader. IE the main bootloader sits in the MBR and when called actually executes the MBR in the bootloader partition.
The bootloader residing in that partition can then be much more complex. IE Graphical/text menus et all.
The downside of this scheme is that you HAVE to install the bootloader partition first and then install any operating systems you want. Needless to say the OS/2 boot loader was wonderfull. (I still use it today to dual boot my Linux / Win98 box at home)
Ex-Nt-User
--
-- Slashdot sucks.
GRUB was being maintained for a while by Erich Boleyn and, as I remember it, was released as "stable." Recently the GNU people took it over since Erich didn't have time to work on it, and they're probably bringing it up to snuff with features they want.
I agree with other posters tho...GRUB is so nice there's really little reason to still use LILO.
Say your LILO configuration gets messed up and it doesn't have any bootable images when you reboot. What do you do? You start trying to find a boot disk, because you're up the creek. With GRUB, since it can read the filesystem directly, all you have to start doing is hunting through your fs looking for a kernel image. A more appropriate analogy would be that using LILO is like choosing a car WITHOUT dials even if that option didn't cost you anything.
The 1024 cylinder limit isn't something that the LILO author made up because he was a lousy designer, it's a limit that PC BIOSes have because they were created by lousy designers. Does LILO not need the BIOS anymore? Did they fit an IDE driver on the master boot record?
AH, yes, they can move over their pr0n... but how will they play it??
Microsoft is dumping 4l33t tools for making moviez, in order to build a base for a proprietary format. These kiddiez will download every Linux ISO out there and probably even TRADE them on IRC (lol!), but they'll never switch to Linux and lose their warez...
IMHO it looks much more intuitive than Lilo. You still have to install Lilo of course, in the Linux boot partition instead of the MBR. I am sure Lilo is more powerful but in most cases XFdisk would be much easier to user. XFdisk supports harddisks up to 1 Terabyte.
And yes, it is GPL-ed, should anyone ask.
-------
Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
er... why is this good? how often do you boot a machine?
we've got about half a dozen linux servers here and an equal number of linux desktops. we rarely reboot the servers (and with dual power supplies we've even kept them up while reconfiguring the power to the server room - think long extension cords) and the desktops always boot the same kernel.
from what you described it's like putting altitude gauges and flap controls in a car. sure, it looks neat, but why?
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
LILO still boots Linux off of MS-DOS style partitions because it's designed to boot OS's that only read those partitions. What good would it do to fdisk the disk in slices unless that's the only thing you're going to do with the disk. Windows, DOS, et al won't even recognize those disks as formatted.
If you want something better, you can look into System Commander. For what LILO does, it does it fast, well, and small. To tell me how much space System Commander takes up on your disk to be able to run bootloaders for all the OS's it does....
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
This is quite a complex problem and is about the kernel not LILO - 2.2.14 was supposed to fix this but doesn't seem to have done on my 34 GB drive.
See Andries Brower's excellent Large Drive HOWTO for full details of this and other problems with larger disks - http://www.linuxdoc.org/.
and you don't have to reinstall it after each kernel upgrade.
--
there was a fix for >32gb drives folded into the 2.2.15pre series around 6 or 7.
there's also an issue with _lots_ of award bioses where they can't handle >32gb drives. award fixed this a while back, but many mobo oems haven't updated their bioses (like asus) - which is extremely frustrating. i have an asus p5a-b, and the only way i can use my 40gb maxtor is by having a 32gb drive to boot from, and not tell the bios about the maxtor. since linux doesn't use bios routines, it picks up the 40gb fine when it boots.
irritating nonetheless.
--
LILO's approach of jumping to a predetermined block generally works OK, but it will always be as problematic as the retarded PC BIOS forces it to be. I've had some difficulty with a system that had about 5 SCSI disks hanging off two controllers with their various BIOS defects.
.SYS file) from a "C:" FAT partition. This lets you avoid the BIOS entirely and get at partitions that aren't recognized at boot time for whatever reason.
On the other hand, NT has an interesting kludge to work around this situation. It allows you to load a disk driver (the NT
Of course, NT4's boot process has it's other annoyances, particularly on IDE drives (which MS seemed less keen on supporting than the Linux folks), not to mention that it doesn't try to support a good number of motherboards.
The real solution would be a OpenFirmware type system, instead of the continual series of "large disk" IDE kludges. Maybe, some day, the whole BIOS/Disk Geometry issue will be transparent to the user, but we may need something like IA64 to get there.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Personally, I like Bootman, the boot manager that ships with BeOS. It is very simple.
See, I had Linux and BeOS on my computer, and it would just boot to a colorful menu that would select "BeOS" by default, but if I pressed an arrow key, it would switch to Linux. Then I'd just hit enter (or wait 5 seconds) and that was it.
Well, I had extra partition space and I decided to add Windoze as a third OS, because there were certain win32 programs I needed. So I install windows, which of course overwrites the MBR, so I can't boot into anything else now.
Simple - I just put the BeOS CD in, and run a program that loads BeOS straight out of windows. Then, from the Be terminal (a bash shell, or should I say BaSH shell?) I type "bootman". A window comes up listing every partition on every hard disk. I simply put a checkmark by every one that I want to be able to boot from, and give each a name as it will show up on the boot menu. I click "OK" and that's it. Bootman has taken back my MBR.
--
grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
A quick search of Google's Open Directory revealed a list of bootloaders!
Click here to check it out.
Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
MYTH: Most large scale enterprise server drive storage is larger-sized diskx.
.60) < COST_OF_n_LINUX_LICENSES? (leaving out the support calls, we'll assume they are the same). Some is still more than none. That being said, almost every OS has its place.
Fact: Most large DB systems prefer to have collections of the *smallest* capacity points (was 4GB, now usually 9GB), so that they can gain more from performace. More arms, less spindle time, more throughput. Large scale RAID arrays are far more likely to get a terabyte by RAIDing ~130 9GB drives than by RAIDing 30 40GB drives.
Single workstations (for MM) may have a large drive for storage, but that's not the server.
Ah, so if you deduct it, you get your (say 40%) of that cost back... so, you mean that (COST_OF_n_NT_LICENSES x
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
That should hold us for a while. Maybe until next year.
:-)
Of course, you can always have more than 1 disk. If you can't fit your boot loader onto a 2 Tb partition, you must be running an inferior OS
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
It's still a bit hairy to install, but I beats me why anyone is still using Lilo. With grub, you get an editable list of boot images. If you messed up, the only thing you need is figure-out where a kernel is, and you've got tab-completion to find it. No messing around with boot floppies.
So, can anyone tell me why she's using Lilo for her distribution?
Jan
--
Jan Nieuwenhuizen | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
www.xs4all.nl/~jantien | www.lilypond.org
Friend of mine tells me that is only a problem if you've got LBA enabled in the BIOS. I checked on my 36 gig drive at home and I do indeed have LBA enabled in the BIOS and can only access 32 GB. I plan on reinstalling shortly and will disable LBA and see if that lets me see the whole drive.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You can actually get away with putting the Linux kernel on a FAT partition as long as you take steps to insure that it doesn't get relocated when you defragment your drive. Heh. Easily fragmentable file system... you may as well be putting your data on the drive by hitting it with a rock...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
In 4.0+ you can set up boot0 to use packet mode rather than the CHS mode to boot beyond 1024 cyl. Of course this IS hardware dependent and not all machines will behave properly.
marotti.com
I think news about this has been out for a while yet (I seem to remember hearing about it, but maybe it wasn't the official release) -- regardless, it's still good news. :/ :)
Especially for new folks. A roomate I had tried to install linux - Red Hat wouldn't let him create a boot partition. Why? Because his windows (which he was going to dual boot into) was taking up space above the limit. At the time, I didn't even know about the limitation. We had to break out FIPS and get to work.
The book that came with his distro (not official Red Hat, I think it came with the 'for dummies' book) only brieftly mentioned the limitation, and did not mention workarounds. I don't know if my roomate even uses linux anymore, so traumatic did the install seem
Another friend was installing linux. I remember mentioning this problem and trying to explain for an hour and a half exactly what the problem was. My friend's not stupid, but the vaugaries of the hard drive are not for the weak of heart. She installed fine (she's got a linux-only system right now) but I was worried the warning would scare her off.
To make a long story short (too late) I look forward to not having to warn people about this anymore. I'll be able to reccommend Linux to many more people, now
-Denor
Now there's some good news :) The 1024 cylinder limit has been bugging me for a while, along with other people who already have Windows installed. For those who like to try Linux but still use Windows (like me) - resizing your Windows partition to fit Linux on the system is all very well, but nowadays it still tends to hog the first 1024 cyls. It's possible to move all the data "down" 10MB for a /boot partition, but it takes quite some time! All the hackers I've spoken to have said it simply wasn't possible to break the 1024 limit... My congrats to the coders. Now take up space travel and break the speed of light :P
In a word: SCSI. (And the linear option, it won't hurt you.)
---
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
I noticed in the comments section there is a claim that GNU GRUB never had that problem. Has anyone used GRUB? I am interested in knowing if LILO has any advantages over it. I'm not trying to start a flame war, but I have noticed that LILO and loadlin seem to be the boot loaders of choice among the HOWTOS.
According to the grub page, grub isn't publicly available. Only alphas are--can an alpha bootloader really be better than LILO? (which is more established) Is there any meat to this guys comment?
I need a TiVo for my car. Pause live traffic now.
3 Days after I get it working ... THEY RELEASE A VERSION OF LILO THAT DOESN'T HAVE THE 1024 CYLINDER LIMIT!!!!!!!!
ARRRRRRRRRRGH!!!!!
DaiTengu
--------
Damage Inc. BBS
I friend of mine once did 5 Debian installs back-to-back.
He's ok now, except any time someone says "dselect", he starts screaming and sobbing uncontrollably.
This is great news! No more separate /boot partitions, etc..
I've had to explain the 1024 cylinder limitation to numerous newbies before, and it does nothing but puzzle them. Once distributions get the new LILO, that's a thing of the past. Maybe it's not too late for Debian to fold this into potato. Fingers crossed...
Here's a question for boot loader gurus: Do GRUB and other boot loaders have the 1024 cylinder limit problem as well?
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Hi people. This is a joke, a parody of Microsoft's Linux Myths page. I know how tax deductions work, but thanks anyhow.
-JD, certified geek
Now that you have brought it to our attention, we realize the enormity of our gaffe.
Please accept our bowing and scraping as we endevor to correct our appaling mistake. In future we will post no stories without consulting you for approval.
No, that's not enough. We will give you all creative control of slashdot since we are clearly incapable of the intelect needed to properly run this, or any other, site.
Moderators, please moderate this post down as it is unworthy of being seen.
We now go to disembowel ourselves in shame.
With Abject Regret,
The Management.
Your wallet stays open. Our source remains closed. We are MSFT
Gee, SILO has been able to boot past 1024 cylinders for ages now. It also doesn't have to be run on new kernel images, understands ext2 and iso9660 filesystems, and even has some simple functionaly like the ability to ls some directory to see what you want to boot. In addition to Linux it can also boot SunOS and Solaris, and has been ported to PowerPC for use on Apple's Open Firmware systems. Very nice. Of course, the catch is that you'll need a system with enough intelligence in its firmware to know what it is. The peecee BIOS is too braindead for something nice like this. Though the possibility might exist of writing a bootloader for peecees that included an OF emulator. But then, why bother; writing real-mode 16-bit x86 code isn't my idea of fun, and I doubt it's yours either.
(On the other hand, I still think Shoestring was better. :)
For those wanting alternative loaders, take a look at these, to see if they'll do what you want. (I can't remember the URLs, but they should all be on Freshmeat.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
LILO sucks, try GRUB. GRUB lets you boot from arbitrary kernel images, has a nice menu and doesn't need to be rerun after every kernel install. It works with *BSD, HURD, and maybe other OSes as well.
http://www.netbsd.org/Misc/feature s.html#large-ide
gd
This is Stuff That Matters. Some new version of an ICQ client is not slashworthy. But LILO boots most linux computers every day. It has also been the cause of more newbies giving up than probably any other problem. "Why do I have to have /boot?" "what's this 1024 cylinder thing?" "I can't make a new partition under 1024, that's where windows is!" Etc...
Fixing this problem _is_ big news, as far as I'm concerned, and I would have missed it on Freshmeat.
---
Hey, it could be worse! You know you've been around Linux for too long when you can remember having to boot off floppy disks because there was no hard disk boot loader available.
One thing to remember about boot loaders is that their only purpose is to help the disk boot. You don't want a large application sitting here or you slow your system boot time down even more. I could be wrong here, but I believe that LILO has to fit completely in the MBR. This severly constrains how much can be put into it.
If something more is really needed, you would have to have a first stage loader like LILO boot a 2nd stage loader with all the bells and whistles. The problem this is that you have to get the 2nd stage loader out of the way for the kernel to come into memory.
Ask yourself the question, is this really necessary? Machine boots, I'm happy. Put your time in configuration tools to help with setting up LILO in the first place
World Beach List, my latest project.
It probably boots more systems on this planet than the old DOS MBR did though its useful lifetime, and it sure seems stable enough. . .
-Omar
Myth: Linux supports the use of larger-sized hard disks that are required for large scale enterprise server use.
Fact: Linux makes no sense as a server. Whereas NT supports up to 480 gazillion petabytes of disk storage, the largest disks Linux supports are only 27 terabytes. This limitation is especially frustrating for e-commerce companies and multimedia developers, for whom large amounts of hard drive are a requirement.
Myth: Linux has a lower TCO
Fact: If you consider that buying NT licenses for business use is tax-deductible, as are all those tech support calls, NT actually has a lower TCO than Linux! How are you going to expense software that doesn't cost anything? Eh?!?
Actually, I hate LILO. I'm (genuinely) curious what the people posting in its favour like about it - it seems to me that it's not so much the favourite as it is the sole viable option, currently. In particular, have they used other schemes, like FreeBSD 3-4's multi-stage bootloader? A real CLI that can actually do stuff like read a filesystem, name a kernel by sight, and dynamically switch devices even from the first-stage loader in the boot block (not to mention from either a serial line or a console, automatically probed for or manually switchable at boot time). The next stage loader after that can dynamically preload modules, among a host of other useful features. And I don't have to update the MBR on the raw disk (!) every damn time I rebuild a kernel.
LILO has been due for replacement for a looong time, and it should probably take the current reliance on the awful MS-DOS fdisk style partitioning scheme with it (for a slice scheme like the BSD and many others use, or better still a completely flexible named-partition design like the (gasp) Mac has had for years). Really, these are areas that have been addressed by other Unices for years, including the free ones.
-- Life is short. Forgive quickly. Kiss slowly. ~ Robert Doisneau
Like hell. Every day!? Lessee, the last time I saw a LILO prompt was oh what the heck, 8 months ago? I had to bring the system down because of a hurricane.
Now if LILO loaded NT, well then everyone would see it just about every day... {cackle}
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
Older methods to get around this problem was to put a boot partition with the kernel image on a separate partition (earlier) on the disk to satisfy LILO. But now that shouldn't be necessary (unless you've got 27+ TB disks!)
make world, not war
So the problem with LILO was that the root partition you wanted to boot to had to be all under the 1024 cyl limit?
To be totally exact, the kernel and related boot file had to be under the 1024th cyl. However, it's usually a good idea to make sure the whole partition is under the limit, as otherwise the OS might allocate the blocks for your next kernel upgrade right at the end of the partition, in which case you're fscked.
Is there a different problem with drives over 32Gig?
This sounds like a pure kernel problem. The problem with LILO is brain-dead BIOSes (well it's not totally their fault, the original BIOS interface assumed that things never got very big, like over ~800 Meg). It would be very interesting if some MB OEM created a new BIOS interface that can handle reasonably sized disks (say using an unsigned 64 bit int for handling addresses, with addressing single bytes thats 16777216 terabytes).