[PLUG] Re: Partition recommendations

[Christopher N. Deckard]

> I use ReiserFS as my my main / partition.  I have no /boot or /home 
> partition.  My kernel is sitting happily on a reiserfs partition.  The 
> reason this works is that the kernel being used is really stored in the 
> fs independant MBR.


Try recompiling your kernel with ReiserFS as a module, and without 
creating an initial ram disk.  It probably won't boot, but you can 
correct me if I'm wrong.  It won't matter if it's grub or lilo at that 
point as once the boot sequence goes to mount your root filesystem, it 
won't have the driver for it.  Just because grub can read the fs, 
doesn't mean the kernel can.

I use XFS on my fileserver and the kernel is stored in /boot which is 
part of /.  If you choose to use a /boot, then you probably don't want 
to use a journaled filesystem because the journal takes up a large chunk 
of space.  The default journal size for ReiserFS is 32MB, which means to 
have a somewhat useable /boot, you'd have to make it at least 40MB.  You 
CAN create it without the journal, but I haven't done that.

As for preferred bootloaders, lilo is simple, grub is powerful.  READ 
the documentation before you decide to jump into grub.  You should also 
practice making grub boot disks (keep one lying around anyway) to play 
with grub.  Having a grub floppy is so nice.  You can boot many screwed 
up computers.

-Chris