jam <j...@tigger.ws> writes:
> On Friday 30 October 2009 09:00:04 slug-requ...@slug.org.au wrote:
>> > Thanks everyone for the advice.
>> >
>> > Following the KISS principle I am going to:
>> > 1. Live within the RAM can access now (just over 3Gb)
>> > 2. Use a single Linux partition (besides boot) on the larger drive
>>
>> I find it useful putting /home on a separate partition. Then if you
>> totally hose your o/s, you can just reinstall and keep all your existing
>> data and app preferences (though of course you'll need to reinstall any
>> additional apps).
>
> Totally agree with Sonia about root and home.
> and [when] not [if] you hose your install. Upgrades/BadThing Try New Distro 
> all that sort of stuff.
>
> Why on earth would you put /boot on a separate partition. That is an artifact 
> of pre-war motherboards (TheGreatWar).

Actually, there is a second reason for /boot on a separate partition: until
very, very, very recently grub1 shipped with most Linux distributions, and it
was a fairly stupid bit of software.

It could not boot a kernel from anything complex, so any RAID other than
strict mirroring, or LVM, meant that the content of /boot was inaccessible to
grub, and consequently hard to boot from.[1]

Now grub2 is starting to be used more broadly this is slowly changing, but
I would still favour the conservative strategy of dropping in a separate
partition with a simpler software and file-system stack for /boot.

        Daniel

Footnotes: 
[1]  Some distributions just refused, others deployed lilo instead, with all
     the pain that implies when something in the boot area changed.

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✣ Daniel Pittman            ✉ dan...@rimspace.net            ☎ +61 401 155 707
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