In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> you write:
> I went nuts partitioning the new disk. I was mostly just
>experimenting. Many will think I have gone needlessly overboard. I won't
>disagree. The old disk has two partitions, one being swap. The new disk
>has a partition for just about everything. These directories all live on
>their own partitions:
> /usr
> /usr/local
> /var
> /home
> /etc
> /bin
> /tmp
> /lib
>
I think the FSTND standard requires these directories to be available
during boot:
/bin
/dev
/etc
/lib
/tmp
/sbin
(Note that /etc and /tmp must be writable, I don't know about the rest.)
I can't remember about /var, but suspect that it is required for
/var/run, /var/lock, and /var/log.
It should be safe to put /usr and /home on seperate partitions. I
have created diskless boot systems which do just that.
> When let 'er rip, I only get as far as this message in the boot
>sequence:
>
> VFS: root partition (ext2 filesystem) mounted read-only.
This is normal.
>If I boot from the old drive, the next message is :
>
> INIT: something else that flashes by too quickly to be read.
This could be normal, too, but of course, how can I tell ;-)
>I tried copying the contents of /bin and /etc to root partition instead of
>having them on their own partitions, but that didn't help. Anyway, init is
>in /sbin which is on the root partition anyway. Should I have /lib on the
>root partition too ?
AFAIK, this is how things work:
The first process the kernel tries to start is /sbin/init.
/sbin/init is essiential!! However, it requires the following
shared libraries:
"ldd /sbin/init" gives:
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x4000e000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)
init reads its configuration from /etc/inittab.
Hence /lib and /etc is required.
Also, /bin is extremely important, it contains files like
/bin/sh, which is needed to run startup-scripts. (side note:
sh, actually bash on my system, also requires shared libraries
from /lib).
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 Aug 2 10:33 /bin/sh -> bash
Note "ldd /bin/bash" gives:
libreadline.so.2 => /lib/libreadline.so.2 (0x4000e000)
libncurses.so.3.4 => /lib/libncurses.so.3.4 (0x40039000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x4007e000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x40083000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)
It should be obvious that /etc is vital (how can the system mount
other filesystems without any startup scripts or /etc/fstab)?
I hope this helps.
Brian May
PS: Of course it might be possible to only have the bare essiental
files on the root file system, and remount partitions like /etc
over the top of the root filesystem, but I don't like this, as IMHO it
makes it harder (read near impossible) to actively maintain, and
might cause problems for programs that create temp files on startup.
(I am not sure if libc6 still does this in /etc).
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