[CentOS] Relocating /boot and /

[John Summerfield]

Mark Hull-Richter wrote:
> Due to the peculiar way that my root drive is configured (incomplete 
> advance
> planning for Windows to Linux conversion), I have had thoughts about moving
> /boot and / to a different place on the drive.  Current configuration is:
> 
> sda1 - 30Gb primary partition (was the E: drive)
> sda2 - 120 Gb primary partition (was my H: drive)
> sda3 - 100Mb /boot primary partition
> sda4 - Extended partition
> sda5 - 4Gb swap partition
> sda6 - 145Gb / partition
> 
> I was thinking about rearranging the disk to a more conventional layout


What problem are you trying to solve?

> where /boot is first, swap next, / next and the rest after that.  It
> probably isn't necessary since the drive runs fine (well, almost - last
> night /boot developed a weirdity in its superblock and I had to recover 
> with
> the install DVD in rescue mode and using the alternate superblock, but it's
> back up and running, having survived the boot fsck), but I was wondering if
> anyone had tried something like this before.  Besides, having a backup (or
> new) /boot might not be a bad idea after last night....
> 
> Are there any serious advantages/disadvantages to having /boot in the 
> middle
> of the disk and / after it?
> 
> I was thinking that I could remove the 1 & 2 partitions, recreate them with
> a hole in between for a (new/replacement) swap, and copy the original

There is no advantage*, with Linux 2.6 kernels, to having a swap 
partition over having a swap file. Swap files are more flexible, easier 
to manage. As a Linux Kernel Engineer, you should know that;-)

* unless you're using suspend to disk, I'm not sure about that.


> partitions to the new locations, then update the grub.conf and voila!  (I
> would hope....)
> 
> I'm also wondering about complications from having the swap and / 
> partitions
> inside the extended partition....

At one point I had RHEL Beta 5 Client and Server, SLED and SUSE 10.x on 
the one box. Might have had FC6 too. The only complication was that 
Anaconda couldn't handle repartitioning the drive.


-- 

Cheers
John

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