On Monday 13 April 2015 04:35:55 pm Henry Law wrote: > The Paravel "appliance" installs itself with a /boot partition, which is > a common way to do things, and also an /altboot partition, which seems > to contain the same files and looks like a backup copy, though it's > permanently mounted. When there are two hard disks then /boot and > /altboot are on different volumes. > > Can anyone here suggest what it's for and why it's there?
I haven't looked that deeply into Cent or RedHat, but I do know that QNX uses an altboot. In QNX, it *is* a separate root file system, such that the *system* can be booted for repair, whatever, in the event the normal root partition, OR needed system binaries become damaged for whatever reasons. One can boot altboot, mount the root partition, and fix it, much the same as booting a damaged linux box with the repair CD, or a Knoppix CD, except that an altboot gives you the same familiar system with known compatible binaries. User applications are not in altboot. Just the base system. altboot is normally not accessible by the root system, so is far less likely to be damaged or lost, barring a disk failure. Since Linux is a monolithic, it's far more vulnerable, far more likely a wrong or incompatible "driver" might be built in. ( such as the module that knows how to read and write the root file system ) As such, I would not eliminate it without a really, really good reason. -- Cowboy http://cowboy.cwf1.com We must remember the First Amendment which protects any shrill jackass no matter how self-seeking. -- F. G. Withington _______________________________________________ Rivendell-dev mailing list Rivendell-dev@lists.rivendellaudio.org http://caspian.paravelsystems.com/mailman/listinfo/rivendell-dev
