Resizing and defragmenting Linux filesystems (NewsForge) [LWN.net]

Resizing and defragmenting Linux filesystems (NewsForge)

Posted Oct 14, 2003 10:35 UTC (Tue) by p00ya (guest, #15990)
In reply to: Resizing and defragmenting Linux filesystems (NewsForge) by eru
Parent article: Resizing and defragmenting Linux filesystems (NewsForge)

I nowadays install my desktop system with with 3 partitions: "/boot", swap, and "/" for everything else, and believe this is the best arrangement for a personal system, because then you don't get inconvenient repartitioning problems if the usage of the various file systems is not what you expected initially.

Why have the /boot then? I'm running a reiserfs / at home quite happily, and there's nothing in /boot that isn't recoverable with grub on a rescue disk (or knoppix FTM). Take the usual security/safety precautions for a home system and you should be fine.

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Resizing and defragmenting Linux filesystems (NewsForge)

Posted Oct 14, 2003 11:02 UTC (Tue) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]

Why have the /boot then?

Supposedly with some BIOSes, LILO cannot boot the kernel if it lies too far from the beginning on a large disk. Putting it into its own partition at the beginning of the disk avoids this. Maybe this no longer matters on current computers and/or with Grub?