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From: | Hollis Blanchard |
Subject: | Re: partition layouts - separate /boot |
Date: | Tue, 5 Apr 2005 10:47:41 -0500 |
On Apr 4, 2005, at 11:55 PM, Vernon Mauery wrote:
Hollis Blanchard wrote:I've been thinking about how to install grub2 on an Open Firmware system. Here's one possibility: /boot -- Linux-native filesystem (e.g. ext3) holds kernels, initrd, etc /boot/grub -- firmware-native filesystem (on Mac HFS+, on others FAT, etc) holds grub executable, grub.cfg, modules The grub ELF file must live on a firmware-native filesystem. When run,it can find out what partition it was booted from, so that is a natural place to load grub.cfg from as well (and why not modules while we're at it?). Thus this is the value of the "prefix" GRUB environment variable.Putting a restraint that says /boot/grub must be a separate partition doesn't sound like a good idea. It just clutters the partition table with another small partition.If all it gains us is that we know where we booted from, we still need to know where /boot is. I don't see what this gains us -- the root command or prefix variable is still required. It sounds to me that if you want to have a firmware native partition type, having all of /boot be that type would be preferred.
I know there is at least one version of IBM Open Firmware which has a 4GB limit on disk reads. Creating a separate partition is the only way I know of to keep a filesystem from locating blocks above that 4GB limit.
You're correct: if we have /boot and /boot/grub partitions, we still need to know where /boot is. That's the heart of my question.
Haven't my arguments about trying to use FAT for /boot convinced you that using a firmware-native filesystem may not always be a good idea? To summarize, firmware-native filesystems:
- may not be well-tested (HFS)- may not support expected features like symlinks or file permissions (FAT)
- may be less reliable, e.g. no journalling (FAT)- may not support fsck, and wouldn't you like to fix filesystem corruption on /boot?
-Hollis
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