/boot as LV...
 

Hey Guys,

While installing linux, i got error message when i tried to create LV for /boot... i checked with my friends n they told me that /boot should be a standard partition...
why is that, i asked them but they had no good explanation for it... could someone please explain me why do we create standard partition for /boot, why can't i use LV??? also i heard that its good practice to create separate partitions (LV or standard) for /, /home, swap & other major directories instead of 1 partition for all these... any advantage of it???

Thanks in Advance!!!


SkM...

First of all, I'm going to assume that LV means "logical volume" - something that I've never actually used, so have no experience with. I *think* your reason is that grub needs to read the kernel off that partition so that it can boot, and reading an LVM partition would be too much to ask of it, since, if I know things correctly, it can't be bigger than 512 bytes, and (I think) is written in Asm, not C or whatever.

And for your question about separate partitions,...... - *I've* never done it, i.e. never had separate partitions for everything.... got along fine :)

How's the weather in Hyderabad, Sk? :) I'm in India too!

Quick and dirty explination. GRUB can not read a Logical Partition Manager (LVM). So GRUB must first load the linux kernel before anything can be read from an LVM. Thus the /boot partition must be a "normal" partition. I stick with a small ext partition for boot myself, not sure what other partition formats work.

I got it!!! thanks a lot!!! Hyderabad is coool, rainy season... where r u from???

Thats it, i was looking for something like this... Thanks a lot !!! by the way, what would the minimum size for /boot, i generally use 512MB (RHEL6, Backtract5), can i go anything less than this & just wild guess, if i have small /boot partition, is it gonna help in fast booting of OS...

Having a small /boot will make no speed difference & you don't want to confine it too much. If it fills up with new kernels, you could have issue...
Incidentally, you can put it on RAID1 if you wanted to, but not LVM.

Thanks Chris... As i wrote earlier, i use 512MB for /boot, i hope its enough... now RAID is something new for me, let me try that also...

Hey Sk, I've just sent you an email, please reply.