Kernel Size limitation on Interactive 386/ix

Conor P. Cahill cpcahil at virtech.uucp
Fri Feb 16 14:45:43 AEST 1990


In article <205 at ncrday.Dayton.NCR.COM> marlene at ncrday.UUCP () writes:
>When trying to link together TCP/IP, Starlan, and a WD7000 SCSI driver with
>Interactive 2.02,  I can't boot the new kernel.  It just dies while trying to
>boot.  Our initial reaction is the problem is the size of the kernel, because
>we understand there is a size limitation of the kernel.  What is this size 
>limitation?  Is it /unix size? or is it memory needed for all kernel space?
>Is there a way I can tell if this is the problem I am having for sure?

There is no real limit on the size of /unix (although I believe it must
fit into the first 1023 cylinders of the disk :-) ) since release 3.2 (of 
which 2.0.2 is a derivative).  

Older versions (like 3.0, 3.1) had a limit that the size of the base 
kernel (text + initialized data) had to fit into the amount of non-extended
memory on the motherboard (usually 512K or 640K).

To determine the cause of the problem you must start from scratch.
Remove all the special drivers and extra cards.
One by one add them back into the system and see where it dies.  Then
you will know where the problem is.  


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