fuck off windows

[brain]

Me too. Fuck you Bill. Windows free since Feb/march full on.
Fedora 7 here. NO issues, oh and Mandriva 2007 for desktop like yerman..
Bill can suck eggs.

404

[playthatbeat]

I have to announce my forst reboot in a while, uptime was 81 days, and it was caused by me unplugging mah box instead of a soldering iron after a bit of nice self-harm..

NOTE: UPS saves Uptime.

[as4]

Now this /*WILL*/ end up in the "Computer Messing" forum, but I had a helluvalotuvgrief installing ANOTHER linux distro on these SATA drives.

fdisk -l /dev/sda
Warning: omitting partitions after #15.
They will be deleted if you save this partition table.

Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1           8       64228+   6  FAT16
/dev/sda2               9       30320   243481140    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5               9        2619    20972826    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda6            2620        6796    33551721    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda7            6797       10973    33551721    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda8           10974       12278    10482381    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda9           12279       12291      104391   83  Linux
/dev/sda10          12292       14902    20972826   83  Linux
/dev/sda11          14903       15424     4192933+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda12          15425       15437      104391   83  Linux
/dev/sda13          15438       18048    20972826   83  Linux
/dev/sda14          18049       25881    62918541   83  Linux
/dev/sda15          25882       28492    20972826    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)

Right. The drive is a 250GB SATA yoke. Due to *inherent* flaws in the Linux Kernel, Linux don't address ANY partition greater than /dev/sda15.
This is due to the 16bit namespace given under the SCSI drivers within the Kernel.

Originally, I made a fast as f**k audio WinXP install on the HDD. Then I made a 100MB /boot a 20GB /root followed by a 4GB swap (yes I have 2GB Ram up in this piece) and then another 100MB /boot and a sister 20GB /root for the second Linux OS.

And all was grand - /dev/sda1 -> /dev/sda15 = Happy days. All partitions speak silicon.

Then I realised I'd have to do another XP SP2 install on another partition above in the free space just for surfin' - (like real player, mplayer 11, IE7 etc.) so the WinXP "Surfer Edition" wouldn't interfere with the ULTRAfast original XP "Audio" Install/Setup that was on the lower drives. [editor's note - this box was bought for FAST audio]

Now in fairness, the second incarnment of XP installed fine onto the 'higher' partitions (i386 folder planted on D:\, run setup from there, use advanced install options and select another partition to install to), but the shit hit the fan whan I tried to install the 2nd Linux OS on /dev/sda12 and /dev/sda13.

Linux determined that the partition table went over the /dev/sda15 limit and Fedora Core 7 REFUSED point blank to even look at the partition table, let alone install itself onto existing partitions within it. Same for RedHat 9, FC1, FC2, FC3, FC4. FC5 even FC6, then SuSE, Mandriva and even poxy Ubuntu . Grrrrrrrrr!

Solution? - Backup and Remove the 2nd WinXP partition so Linux sees a nice partition table it can deal with (/dev/sda1 -> /dev/sda15).

I hope many of you know that Symantec's "Ghost" product fails desperately at this task, even though it *is* the industry standard.

However, I got a freeware tool to do it (DriveImage XML - http://www.runtime.org/dixml.htm) and lo and behold it worked.

Linux: /dev/sda16 backed up and gone. Linux Installs.
DriveImage restored the 2nd WinXP "Surfer's edition" back to /dev/sda16 and Linux don't know the difference.

So, don't get me wrong, Linux is the shitt, and no doubt about that. Windows can't run without a GUI that robs 60% performace off the box, Linux uses that 60% for server throughput (No GUI) so Linux wins, but I just wish Alan Cox and the byes would let us cross-platformers have more leeway than just 16 POXY partition only to play with.

kernel.org tells me SATA is treated like SCSI (yes I know the naming convention suggests that) so there is a physical limit of 16 partitions per drive, but that NEEDS sorting.

As of this time:
Windows XP SP1
Kubuntu 7.04
Fedora 7
Windows XP 2 (Surfer's Edition)

All on the same drive.

But Linux is BY FAR the fastest.

L8R