/boot - What do you do?

toasty_ghosty · 2009-08-25 23:49:54

Hello,

Installing Arch on a friends laptop soon. I have always just followed the Wiki on partitioning, but my question is this: What type of file type do you use on /boot? Is there an advantage of using ext4 or ext3 over the default ext2? I understand ext3 and ext4 use journaling, but why is ext2 still default?

Thanks.

-Ghosty

sand_man · 2009-08-26 00:05:35

I suppose ext2 is common for /boot because there is no need for journalling or any of the other fancy features the other filesystems have.

fukawi2 · 2009-08-26 00:15:58

I still use ext2... No point in journaling something that really only gets used at boot time. It's arguable that ext2 is the most reliable and most widely supported across the board so if anything fsck's up, it's least likely to be that, and if it does, you've got a good chance at recovering it.

toasty_ghosty · 2009-09-01 00:51:57

Both bring up good points. Next time I install Arch I won't have to fret about "only" using ext2.

Thanks.

-Ghosty

brendan · 2009-09-01 21:57:54

just to say i use ext2 too. If anything it provides you with a tiny bit more space, so less waste.

Just make sure you dont use ext2 anywhere else ;-)

filoktetes · 2009-09-01 22:22:39

Maybe this is a tiny bit offtopic, but I can't see the use of having a /boot partition for most users. If something terrible happens to /, I can't see how keeping the kernel imaga and other boot files safe can help me. If I were at all able to boot, I would probably boot into a useless system anyway. Using a usb/cdrom rescue disk is usually the best way when something goes terribly wrong (which it doen't for you, I'm sure of course).
I'm not saying that having a separate /boot partition makes a lot of sense for systems totally different from mine, of course, but I can't think of why.

Last edited by filoktetes (2009-09-01 22:22:57)

apollokk · 2009-09-01 22:41:14

I always format this partition as ext3.

With Grub2, we'll have ext4 support.

fukawi2 · 2009-09-01 23:14:13

filoktetes wrote:

I'm not saying that having a separate /boot partition makes a lot of sense for systems totally different from mine, of course, but I can't think of why.

It allows you to use file systems for your '/' partition that GRUB doesn't support.

Wintervenom · 2009-09-01 23:42:36

Yes, you pretty much only need a separate partition for /boot if you're not using one of the Ext filesystems or ReiserFS for your root partition, or your root partition is on LVM/RAID.

Last edited by Wintervenom (2009-09-01 23:43:34)

userlander · 2009-09-01 23:52:22

$ mount -l |grep boot
/dev/hda2 on /boot type ext2 (rw)

Arch Linux

#1 2009-08-25 23:49:54

/boot - What do you do?

#2 2009-08-26 00:05:35

Re: /boot - What do you do?

#3 2009-08-26 00:15:58

Re: /boot - What do you do?

#4 2009-09-01 00:51:57

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#5 2009-09-01 21:57:54

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#6 2009-09-01 22:22:39

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#7 2009-09-01 22:41:14

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#8 2009-09-01 23:14:13

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#9 2009-09-01 23:42:36

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#10 2009-09-01 23:52:22

Re: /boot - What do you do?

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