Which part of a Linux is responsible not bootable beyond 137Gb?

[saikee]

Over the last year I found some distros couldn't cope with high partition numbers, say above 16, while others refused to have anything to do with a hdd larger than 137Gb,

Last few months there have been improvements. The new installer, in this case mainly Anaconda, seem to be able to select the partition freely and complete the installation. However on booting Grub reports

Error 13 Invalid or unsupported executable format

If I use a bootable Grub floppy and do a configfile command one came back with the error message

Error 18 : Select cylinder exceeds max. supported by BIOS

The evidence is the following

FC3 & FC4 kernel 2.6.11 Grub version 0.95
CentOS 4 kernel 2.6.9 Grub version 0.95
Blag 30001 kernel 2.6.12 Grub version 0.95

They all installed faultlessly, refused to boot at area higher than 137Gb but work perfectly when re-installed below 137Gb. I am using FC4 now. It refused to work at hda37 and is showing no problem at hda22. My partition is 5Gb each above hda7. Before that hda1 to hda6 has a total of 10Gb.

The following distros have no such problem beyond 137Gb barrier

Suse 9.1 kernel 2.6.5 Grub version 0.94
Ubunto 5.0.4 kernel 2.6.10 Grub 0.95
Mandriva Kernel 2.6 Grub 0.97
I have also Sam, Slackware 10, Tiny Sofa, Linare and Red Flag successfully installed at >137Gb boundary.

I am not convince it is a Grub problem as I have made a bootable Grub floppy (0.94 version) and it can boot every distro manually if it is bootable.

The kernel version does suggest some older and newer versions have no such problem.

I can understand the error messages but could not understand other distros, with older or newer kernels and Grub, don't suffer the same thing.

Thus my question as titled. Any comment?

[sharth]

your bios on your motherboard defines that limit.

[saikee]

Yet there are quite a few distros (like Suse, Slax, Ubunto, Mandriva..) happlily working with the same BIOS.

I got a feeling if I wait long enough the problem will disappear. Just curious of what causes it. I know distros are not bomb proof, not at the rate they are turning up these days.

I do witness a huge improvement made over the 12 months.