>>> On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 12:22 PM, in message
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Edmund R. MacKenty"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 
-snip-
> One reason for having /boot on a separate filesystem is to keep it safe.  
> Some
> distros (Gentoo, perhaps Debian?) default to a separate /boot filesystem
> which is not mounted by default.  This keeps your pesky users from mucking
> with it.

If any users can modify anything in /boot, then something is seriously wrong.  
If one my system administrators is doing ugly things there, clue bats are in 
order.

> It also ensures that the /boot filesystem is never mounted
> read-write during normal operations, including reboots.  This pretty much
> avoids the possibility of filesystem corruption.  The only time you mount it
> read-write is when you have to install a new kernel into it.

File system corruption should only happen when changes to it haven't been 
written to disk when the system goes down.  Since that should only be when 
installing a new kernel, or creating a new initrd, then not having it mounted 
the rest of the time is no safer than keeping it mounted.  Having to do a fsck 
on a dirty file system is clearly not the same as having a corrupted file 
system.  Using EXT3 for /boot would probably eliminate even that worry.

> So a separate /boot is a safety measure.

Sorry, but I don't see it, and I'm pretty conservative when it comes to things 
like this.


Mark Post

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