Re: partition layouts - symlinks

[Hollis Blanchard]

On Apr 5, 2005, at 2:00 AM, Marco Gerards wrote:

> Hollis Blanchard <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > The other possibility is to have all of /boot as a firmware-native
> > filesystem. I think that's not ideal though, because those filesystems
> > (HFS+, FAT) might not support features like symlinks or Unix-style
> > permissions, or may not be as well-tested as Linux-native filesystems.
>
> HFS+ supports symlinks, FAT does not (unless you use UMSDOS, which is
> not supported).  For every symlink capable filesystem GRUB 2 supports,
> symlink support was implemented.

I think you misunderstand this point. I am not worried about GRUB's 
filesystem support. I am worried about how some Linux distributions 
like to install several kernels (e.g. vmlinux-foo-smp, vmlinux-foo) and 
then create a plain "vmlinux" symlink to the default. That cannot work 
on FAT.

Similarly, reliance on Unix file permissions in /boot will not work 
with FAT. Admittedly this may be less important, as non-root users 
probably have no business in /boot at all, so mount-specified 
permissions may be adequate.

What about fsck on /boot? Aren't these all good reasons to keep /boot 
as a Linux-native filesystem?

-Hollis