[PLUG] OpenSuse 11.4 boot loader installation problem

[Amarendra Godbole]

On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 10:51 AM, Sharique uddin Ahmed Farooqui
<safknw at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Yesterday, I was trying to install to install OpenSuse 11.4, on
> installation screen it shows me warning  "The boot loader is
> installing on a partition that does not lie entirely below 128 GB", is
> anybody else facing same issue?
>
> I faced same issue with 11.3. During 11.3 installation I ignored the
> warning an continue the installation and it did not install grub
> properly and leave my system unbootable. Later I found out that this a
> bug in 11.3, now it is fixed, it looks like it appears again.
>
> https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=621497
>
> Should I install Lilo instead of grub, will it resolve the issue?
[...]

This is a limitation imposed due to the BIOS and CHS access of
hard-drive mess, as most of them cannot access beyond 128G, so loading
the boot loader can fail. Latest BIOS'en can, but there is no reliable
way to detect this, hence many operating systems simply refuse to
boot. This is the prudent thing to do.

For the entire technical she-bang, read up http://www.ata-atapi.com/hiwchs.html

-Amarendra