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#1 2006-10-08 16:01:09

Seb74
Member
Registered: 2006-10-07
Posts: 89

Do I need a /boot?

Reading the install instructions, and it seems theres some simple standard-partition that gives you a /boot, a /swap, and rest as /.

Now, later on, they cover how to do it manually instead, and says that what is really needed is just /swap and /.
So, this /boot, what does it do? Is it just if you need some bootmanager for a dual-boot system or something? I want to dedicate my whole disc for Arch so maybe I shouldn't have a /boot at all or? Better to fix it manually and create a /swap at 500MB and a / for the remaining 240GB or so and then nothing else?

Thanks smile

EDIT: Dont even know if I need to bother configuring Lilo or Grub, as I dont intend to have any sort of dual-boot. Maybe I can exclude them in the install of Arch....or they need to be there anyway?

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#2 2006-10-08 16:12:19

arox1
Member
From: Poland
Registered: 2006-07-08
Posts: 174

Re: Do I need a /boot?

Do I need a /boot?

No

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#3 2006-10-08 16:28:20

Seb74
Member
Registered: 2006-10-07
Posts: 89

Re: Do I need a /boot?

Ok, thanks. Maybe better partitioning manually then, even if its a bit more work. I'll just do a 500MB or so /swap and rest for /

And skip configuring anything that has to do with Grub or Lilo??? Install instructions says you need to config/check those files...or at least the one of the two you use, but if I dont have a /boot maybe its not necessary at all I dont know.

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#4 2006-10-08 16:31:46

toxic
Member
Registered: 2006-06-05
Posts: 117

Re: Do I need a /boot?

If you don't have grub or lilo, then it seems to me you have to write your own script to launch initrd, or find some other tool. It seems reasonable just to stick with grub and add

default 0
timeout 0

to menu.lst
This automatically boots with the first specified boot options. Make sure to have some timeout the first time you install everything properly, as it might be nice to have some way to launch a recovery partition or so if things go wrong.

The thing is that both grub and the initial ramdisk (which prepares your system for booting the kernel and stuff, quite essential I'd say) is located under /boot. So unless you have a very neat way of cooping with that, then I sugest you leave it for now smile

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#5 2006-10-08 16:59:42

fk
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2006-04-29
Posts: 524

Re: Do I need a /boot?

you need /boot, but you don't need a extra partition for /boot


Have you tried to turn it off and on again?

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#6 2006-10-08 17:05:34

Stinky
Member
From: The Colony, TX
Registered: 2004-05-28
Posts: 187

Re: Do I need a /boot?

fk wrote:

you need /boot, but you don't need a extra partition for /boot

Right.  A good partition scheme is set up a swap, then /,  /usr,  and /home.

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#7 2006-10-08 18:15:32

Seb74
Member
Registered: 2006-10-07
Posts: 89

Re: Do I need a /boot?

Thanks guys, but hey, you lost me somewhat here.

I partition manually, and its ok to just creat a /swap and /?

/boot is needed, but not as a separate mount-point, it will be created inside the /?

Grub is needed (almost) and is installed by default, but I need to add two strange lines to its config-file to get it to boot automatically and not sit and wait stupidly for me to accept the only OS there is to boot?

Thanks smile

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#8 2006-10-08 18:18:16

fk
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2006-04-29
Posts: 524

Re: Do I need a /boot?

I partition manually, and its ok to just creat a /swap and /?

/boot is needed, but not as a separate mount-point, it will be created inside the /?

yes


Have you tried to turn it off and on again?

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#9 2006-10-08 18:43:06

noriko
Member
From: In My Mind
Registered: 2006-06-09
Posts: 535
Website

Re: Do I need a /boot?

assuming you only have one option in the list...
you need ..

default 0

this is optional ...

timeout 0

..................

no /boot isn't needed, however the kernel is installed there by default so it will always be on ur system ...

a tip is to create a separate partition for grub, which is where the /boot partition comes from ... i do this myself, separate 200mb partition with just grub on it ... this way if something should go wrong i can always boot (i have dualboot with windows)


The.Revolution.Is.Coming - - To fight, To hunger, To Resist!

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#10 2006-10-08 18:45:47

toxic
Member
Registered: 2006-06-05
Posts: 117

Re: Do I need a /boot?

noriko wrote:

a tip is to create a separate partition for grub, which is where the /boot partition comes from ... i do this myself, separate 200mb partition with just grub on it ... this way if something should go wrong i can always boot (i have dualboot with windows)

Well, the man says he's not planning to dual boot, so it seems like a waste of time to create another partition for this though tongue

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#11 2006-10-08 18:53:59

Seb74
Member
Registered: 2006-10-07
Posts: 89

Re: Do I need a /boot?

Ok, great guys smile
Getting scared as I'm right now at the partitioning selection big_smile

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#12 2006-10-08 18:57:40

Seb74
Member
Registered: 2006-10-07
Posts: 89

Re: Do I need a /boot?

Damn I dont know if the /swap is supposed to be primary or logical. Or if theres any special order to create my /swap and /.
/swap at beginning or should it be after /?

Manual doesn't say very much, it just says "enter cfdisk and creat your partitions". Damn, this is harder than OpenBSD install I must say....

EDIT: Nah, cant wait here for hours and hope for an answer, I'll take a chanse doing both as primary and / first and /swap at the end. At least in OpenBSD I created root first and I guess its the same for Linux.
Guess root should be bootable also. "Units" I dont know what it is but guess its non importand since install manual doesn't mention it at all.

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#13 2006-10-08 19:27:53

noriko
Member
From: In My Mind
Registered: 2006-06-09
Posts: 535
Website

Re: Do I need a /boot?

the type .. prim~ pr logic~ doesn't matter , neither does the order in which hey appears, if anything, you can always change the swap part~ after install...

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

@toxic
i was just stating why i use a sep~ part~ for boot/grub lol tongue ...


The.Revolution.Is.Coming - - To fight, To hunger, To Resist!

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#14 2006-10-08 19:28:40

yankees26
Member
From: Connecticut, USA
Registered: 2006-09-29
Posts: 190

Re: Do I need a /boot?

Yes, swap is primary.  / first and swap second is what I have and it works fine.

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#15 2006-10-08 19:39:42

fk
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2006-04-29
Posts: 524

Re: Do I need a /boot?

yankees26 wrote:

Yes, swap is primary.  / first and swap second is what I have and it works fine.

you can set up swap as promary or as logical, Nerver mind


Have you tried to turn it off and on again?

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#16 2006-10-08 19:41:13

Seb74
Member
Registered: 2006-10-07
Posts: 89

Re: Do I need a /boot?

Ok, great smile

But now I'm stuck. I did set some keymap to swedish but now when I'm at step 4 or whatever, configuration (checking thorugh some config-files to see everythings ok), I see that keymap is something else and also locale is wrong. I want it all Swedish. And it says I could do like this in manual, but opening a new terminal (Alt-F2) and trying to run the command it just says command not found sad

LOCALE
This sets your system language, which will be used by all i18n-friendly applications and utilities. You can get a list of the available locales by running locale -a from the commandline.

EDIT: Made a search for that damn locale file, and its in 7mnt/usr/bin/ so I try running it but it says "Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: and Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: and some more. I dont get any of this. Sad the installations has to be like this, and this is the FIRST POST in the FIRST CONFIGFILE sad

EDIT2: Maybe its ok with english language by the way....but I'd need a swedish keymap but that might be fixable later on. Now I'm stuck at timezone. Trying to enter /usr/share/zoneinfo but there are no zoneinfo in share. Guess it should be "Europe/Stockholm" but I'm not sure....

EDIT3: And what about available keymaps in /usr/share/kbd/keymaps???
Go in there and have a look. Its full of more and more directories and lots of files. Where am I supposed to find available keymaps there, so I can find out which one is the swedish one I want (although I already choosed it first of all during install but doesn't seem to have stuck in the rc.conf) sad

I'm telling you, OpenBSD is such a breeze compared to this install....cant even compare them....not in the same league. Open is soooo much more straighforward.

EDIT4: OK, RC.CONF DONE....I HOPE, BUT WASN'T EASY I'M TELLING YOU.

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#17 2006-10-08 20:45:51

noriko
Member
From: In My Mind
Registered: 2006-06-09
Posts: 535
Website

Re: Do I need a /boot?

upon close inspection of the usr/kdb~ ...
i assuem the swedish cc(country code) is 'se' and that ur cpu is of the x86 family..
so your kbd.maps are in /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty/se-* .. of which you have 4 choices ...
se-fi-209
se-fi-lat6
se-it209
se-lat6
:found at , i386/qwerty:... so mine would be uk => uk.map.gz .. so set the keymap to one of the above..
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
please refer to the wiki://http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Configuring_locales for locale~
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
as for time-zone, chances are that you will set the correct time-zone, and the time will appears incorrect..  i've uploaded a (python) script i found on a gentoo forum, i think.. that should sort it out.. by correcting the utc... http://arch.j2k.cc/pub/ (/utz)
......
good lukk..hope i didn't miss anything..


The.Revolution.Is.Coming - - To fight, To hunger, To Resist!

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#18 2006-10-08 20:53:14

Seb74
Member
Registered: 2006-10-07
Posts: 89

Re: Do I need a /boot?

noriko wrote:

upon close inspection of the usr/kdb~ ...
i assuem the swedish cc(country code) is 'se' and that ur cpu is of the x86 family..
so your kbd.maps are in /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty/se-* .. of which you have 4 choices ...
se-fi-209
se-fi-lat6
se-it209
se-lat6
:found at , i386/qwerty:... so mine would be uk => uk.map.gz .. so set the keymap to one of the above..
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
please refer to the wiki://http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Configuring_locales for locale~
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
as for time-zone, chances are that you will set the correct time-zone, and the time will appears incorrect..  i've uploaded a (python) script i found on a gentoo forum, i think.. that should sort it out.. by correcting the utc... http://arch.j2k.cc/pub/ (/utz)
......
good lukk..hope i didn't miss anything..

Thanks smile
I did choose "sv-latin1" or something as keymap, according to some guy on a swedish forum. Also thats what I did choose in the beginning of the install but I dont know why I did it cause it didn't get into the config of the system apparently.

You mean theres something wrong with time-managment in Arch???

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#19 2006-10-08 21:04:13

noriko
Member
From: In My Mind
Registered: 2006-06-09
Posts: 535
Website

Re: Do I need a /boot?

You mean theres something wrong with time-management in Arch???

no, no lol .. i don't know what causes the utc reference to go wrong... i read somewhere that it's windows...
so since u don't dualboot with windows u should be fine.. i simply haven't got full-proof that's it's a windows/dboot issue . so i post a solution..  8)


The.Revolution.Is.Coming - - To fight, To hunger, To Resist!

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#20 2006-10-08 21:51:49

Seb74
Member
Registered: 2006-10-07
Posts: 89

Re: Do I need a /boot?

noriko wrote:

You mean theres something wrong with time-management in Arch???

no, no lol .. i don't know what causes the utc reference to go wrong... i read somewhere that it's windows...
so since u don't dualboot with windows u should be fine.. i simply haven't got full-proof that's it's a windows/dboot issue . so i post a solution..  8)

Yeah I think I've heard about windows messing up dual boot some way....tried some dual boot with SuSE (or was it Mandriva) long ago, and got some time problems. Might have been it.
Now I have a bunch of torubles appearing here....seems like everything that can go wront goes wrong for me...nothing works, almost. And sadly bedtime here very soon so I wont get to try out Samba today, or even doing a ssh-login since ssh seems to be missing big_smile

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#21 2006-10-09 03:27:25

rawfuzz
Member
Registered: 2006-10-07
Posts: 16

Re: Do I need a /boot?

[query]no, no lol .. i don't know what causes the utc reference to go wrong... i read somewhere that it's windows... [/query]
Where on earth did you read that? Sunday's newspaper? There's settings messed up, not winblows.

amnesia# date
Mon Oct  9 03:22:52 UTC 2006 (oh noes, bill!)
...
cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/EST /etc/localtime
...
amnesia# date
Sun Oct  8 23:23:43 EDT 2006 (linus in da haus)

EDIT: To be ON-Topic, you don't necessarily need a separate /boot partition, however one is recommended, along with a properly made fstab, to keep your kernels safe.

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#22 2006-10-09 06:16:31

noriko
Member
From: In My Mind
Registered: 2006-06-09
Posts: 535
Website

Re: Do I need a /boot?

@rawfuzz -

Where on earth did you read that? Sunday's newspaper? There's settings messed up, not winblows.

it's not the settings... .. and yes my /etc/localtime is always linked to the correct time/zonefile .. however, windows xp .. regularly syncs with an online timeserver (i had this turned on, it is by default) .. so when it syncs, it sometimes change the localtime/on the machine.. even slightly, and that's what causes the mess-up..

anyway .. this is offtopic, so end it here .. open a new thread if u feel like discussing this more..


The.Revolution.Is.Coming - - To fight, To hunger, To Resist!

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