[CentOS] /boot on a separate partition?

[Mike - st257]

On Tue, Jun 23, 2015 at 9:27 AM, Robert Heller <heller at deepsoft.com> wrote:

> At Tue, 23 Jun 2015 13:49:08 +0100 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org>
> wrote:
>
> >
> > Do most people today have /boot on a separate partition,
> > or do they (you) have it on the / partition ?
>
> The default CentOS installer always puts /boot on a separate partition.
> This
> is mostly because, the default CentOS installer uses LVM for the bulk of
> the
> disk and Grub is *generally* clueless WRT LVM (at least Grub V1, not sure
> how
> smart Grub V2 is).  Also, there are lots of 'fun' options for what/where
> the
>

Accessing /boot within LVM was not possible with legacy GRUB (GRUB1)
GRUB2 is much "smarter".

I've done a few Debian installs (VMs) with /boot as part of the root
partition which was an LV.  Those were done as a proof-of-concept, but it
also reduced "wasted" space which would otherwise only be usable within the
file system for /boot. And the flexibility of having everything a part of
LVM (which is great if the file systems in use support shrinking).

I'd expect GRUB2 in CentOS7 would allow for /boot within LVM, though I have
not tried it.


> root partition can be, not all of them compatible with what Grub (or other
> boot loaders) know how to deal with.  Having /boot on its own (small)
> partition, using something 'simple' for a file system makes things 'easy'
> for
> bootloaders.  Once the kernel is fired up it can load all sorts of modules
> to
> allow it to mount the root file system, everything from exotic file systems
> to LVM and RAID, etc.
>
> Another advantage of having /boot on its own partition is supporting
> multiple
> linux flavors that is, it is possible to 'share' /boot between CentOS,
> Fedora,
> Ubuntu, Debian, etc. if one wants to, although it is really easier to pick
> one
> system for your 'host' and then install VMs for all of the others, but
> sometimes one needs to test things with different Linux flavors *on the
> bare
> metal* for various reasons.
>
> >
> >
>
> --
> Robert Heller             -- 978-544-6933
> Deepwoods Software        -- Custom Software Services
> http://www.deepsoft.com/  -- Linux Administration Services
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>
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-- 
---~~.~~---
Mike
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