[BBLISA] /boot

[Tom Metro]

Eddy Harvey wrote:
> In the future, there is no reason to ever separate the /boot partition.
> That was required for 486's, whose bios could not boot from a partition if
> the partition extended past cyllinder 1024.  This is archaic, and only
> causes extra confusion nowadays.

It's true that the reasons behind this are largely obsolete, but the 
specifics aren't quite accurate. There was a second addressing threshold 
that plagued 586 class computers:

http://www.48bitlba.com/

Some BIOS and operating systems had problems addressing sectors beyond 
the 137 GB limit. (I have a Windows XP machine in my office that 
suffered from this. It refused to boot after an update that pushed the 
kernel beyond the 137 GB limit.) According to:

http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HOWTO-4.html

This dates back to about 2001. It also shows several other BIOS and 
operating system disk capacity limits that have occurred over the years. 
Next we have a 2 TiB limit to look forward to.


So for the time being, on any machine made within the last 4 or 5 years, 
capacity limits shouldn't be a motivation for using a /boot partition.

However, a /boot partition can have other advantages. If you plan to use 
something a bit out of the ordinary for your root file system, keeping 
/boot separate and using a common file system insures that it'll be 
easily accessible from a rescue CD.

  -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/