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/
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