On boot partitions

  Most canned Linux installations, while partioning the hard disk, do not allow the boot partition to reside outside of the first 1024 cylinders. This is because some of the older BIOSes do not support access to the disk beyond this range ( recall LILO needs BIOS routines to access the disk while bootstrapping). However, most modern BIOSes support the LBA mode of access which can be used to access beyond a few terabytes of the disk ! Therefore one can use LILO safely to boot a kernel even beyond the limitation.

  If you see  your BIOS's POST routines spew out information about LBA mode, rest assured that you can bootstrap a kernel from anywhere in the disk. The deal though is to install LILO in the first place. To this end, use fdisk  to parition the disk. Fdisk allows you to parition the disk and place the kernel wherever you want albeit with a warning. Other utilities like Disk Druid will not allow you to parition and specify a mount point with the kernel residing at  a position beyond the first 1024 cylinders.
 

On ATI Xpert 2000

  My card's chipset is ATI Rage 128 (SM). Unfortunately, the XFree86.4.x series of servers do not recognise this chipset. However, I was able to work around this thanks to Mark Ericksen.

  Mark's solution to this problem is to cast (!) the chipset as ATI Rage 128 RG (AGP). These chipsets are pretty similar, and I personally doubt if they differ at all except for an updated BIOS on the card.  This overrides the default probing  by Xconfigurator  or XFree86 -config .

The part of the XF86Config-4 file which you need to modify is the device section for the "ATI Rage 128 ".

Add an option which says:

Chipset "ATI Rage 128 RG (AGP)"

This is to be done before the driver part which specifies

Driver "r128"

A copy of my XF86Config is available here.

Note well: I repeat, all standard disclaimers apply. If you burn up your card and/or your computer, neither Mark nor I will be responsible.
 

Comcast High Speed Internet with Linux

A quick and dirty method would be as follows: Log on as root, and look out for files under /etc/dhcpc/. Simply delete the dhcpd-eth0.info and dhcpd-eth0.cache files, and reboot the machine.

If you change your cable modem, you should call up customer service and tell them the HFC MAC ID of your new modem. Comcast authenticates you as a user using this MAC address, and DHCP (at the Comcast end) works only if your client requests come from this particular HFC MAC ID.

The cable modem caches the MAC address (meaning ethernet) of the machine/device which plugs into its ethernet interface. This could be a problem if you are manually switching the internet access between two different machines. The only way to get the cable modem (mine is a Motorola Surfboard) to purge its MAC cache is to plug the power cord off, and then insert it back in. Note that setting the cable modem to standby by pressing the button for power-off does not purge the MAC cache of the cable modem.

Linux keyboard problem with IBM R-32 Thinkpad laptop