The only good reason I have ever seen for this is as a work around for broken bioses that are limited in how far into the disk they can see in order to read the boot blocks. A small partition near the front of the drive ensures that any blocks allocated to the boot file are reachable - and once the kernel is in memory you are using more capable Unix/Linux drivers which are unrestricted and hence can access the root partition wherever it lies..
I have heard some people try to justify it on security/safety grounds - ie if your boot file is normally unmounted or mounted read-only, you are less likely to damage it. But boot files are easily recreated so I see no reason to be overly anal about such things. I am much more concerned about being cautious with configuration files and user files. Personally I prefer to keep a small root filesystem which can be backed up regularly, with separate partitions for /usr, /home, /var etc. I see no need to a separate /boot partition under this scenario, and it was certainly not standard practice on traditional Unix systems. Assuming you are going to have a separate root for Ubuntu and Debian, there doesn't seem to be any reason to keep the boot files together - but it can be done if you really want to. Regards, DigbyT On Sat, Apr 08, 2006 at 07:38:35PM +0530, Masatran (Deepak), R. wrote: > Why should "/boot" be on a separate partition (rather than on the "/" > partition)? > > I have installed Debian 3.1 with a separate "/boot" partition. I intend > installing Ubuntu 5.10 . Should I share the "/boot" partition between Debian > and Ubuntu? > -- > http://research.iiit.ac.in/~masatran/ -- Digby R. S. Tarvin digbyt(at)digbyt.com http://www.digbyt.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
