ext3 for /boot ?

Message

Staggerly · Post by **Staggerly** » Thu Apr 22, 2004 12:34 pm

Is it OK to have the boot partition use ext3

Jesore · Post by **Jesore** » Thu Apr 22, 2004 12:52 pm

No problem there.

Jesore

Prompty · Post by **Prompty** » Thu Apr 22, 2004 12:55 pm

ext3 is fine and dandy but you;ll get better performance using reiser

Spooky Ghost · Post by **Spooky Ghost** » Thu Apr 22, 2004 12:58 pm

ext3 should be fine on /boot, it's probably the most tested filesystem. Also, performance of /boot isn't really an issue since all you'll probably do is read the kernel once during boot and that's it.

Mikessu · Post by **Mikessu** » Thu Apr 22, 2004 1:03 pm

I'm also using ext3 on boot with no problems.

Staggerly · Post by **Staggerly** » Thu Apr 22, 2004 1:12 pm

I was just wondering because the install docs used ext2 for boot then ext3 for the rest.
I thought that since I had to compile ext3 into the kernel that maybe ext3 couldn't be used until the kernel was loaded.

vonhelmet · Post by **vonhelmet** » Thu Apr 22, 2004 1:14 pm

So long as they filesystem can be read by your bootloader of choice (i.e. Grub, Lilo, whatever) you're fine. Check the bootloader docs.

I guess it also helps if it can be read by the kernel you're actually storing on the boot partition so that you can copy new kernel images there in the future

So yeah... so long as the filesystem you use can be read by the bootloader and the kernel, you should be fine. Like someone said, it's not like performance is an issue when all you're doing is reading the kernel each time you boot.

Minot · Post by **Minot** » Thu Apr 22, 2004 1:30 pm

Prompty wrote:ext3 is fine and dandy but you;ll get better performance using reiser

Prompty, can you explain why you recommend Reiser? I'm also using Ext3 like the rest of the crowd. I understand Reiser works best with files under 4KB. Some of the files in /boot are significantly larger than that. What's the advantage?

Thanks for your insight!

rewt · Post by **rewt** » Thu Apr 22, 2004 2:17 pm

While you could use ext3 or resier my question would be why
The reason the docs suggest ext2 is that you don't really need to journal a file system that is barely ever written to and you'll waste disk space and performance in order to do it
However what everyone else has said is true, you can use any filesystem you like as long as your boot loader and the kernel know how
As for the most mature tools and filesystem. That would have to be ext2 (my choice for a boot partition) since it's been around longer than either of the others

yj · Post by yj » Thu Apr 22, 2004 5:22 pm

ext3 is fine and dandy but you;ll get better performance using reiser

I don't even use the /boot ext2. i only partition my hd into swap, /, and home without /boot. using ext3. run fast with kernel-2.6.6-rc1. only watch out for

GRUB Configuration

, it seems to give the most problem.

Fitzsimmons · Post by **Fitzsimmons** » Thu Apr 22, 2004 10:48 pm

There is no point in using ext3 for /boot. Ext3 is just ext2 with journaling bolted on which helps with crashes (i.e. data not lost or easy to recover).

Since /boot will almost never be mounted (only on kernel changes/upgrades), it will never have the chance to screw up and ext2 will do you just fine. That being said, there's no disadvantage to using ext3 either.

Rainmaker · Post by **Rainmaker** » Fri Apr 23, 2004 6:11 am

Prompty wrote:ext3 is fine and dandy but you;ll get better performance using reiser

Reiser SUCKS on boot partitions... I had reiser on boot. The disk was 32 megs big, (as recommanded in the install manual) and I kept running out of space. Even with no files on it, my boot partition was still 20 megs...

I think it's the reiser journal, which was quite large in my case. I don't know if this is normal, or if this is my fault.

I just stick with ext2 or ext3 for my boot partition (although I'm thinking about just putting it all in one partition)

Performance has nothing to do with this filesystem, beacuse the kernel is loaded into memory. The files only need to be read at boot-up.

MTZ · Post by **MTZ** » Fri Apr 23, 2004 7:09 am

Got my /boot also formated with ext3. Never had problems with that. On the other hand, why do dou you need a journal for a 5 meg (or so) partition which is basicly only mounted to change the bootloader config or put a new kernel on ?

jkt · Post by **jkt** » Fri Apr 23, 2004 11:50 am

Rainmaker wrote:Reiser SUCKS on boot partitions... I had reiser on boot. The disk was 32 megs big, (as recommanded in the install manual) and I kept running out of space. Even with no files on it, my boot partition was still 20 megs...

rtfm

installation guide. There's something about recommended space for journalled filesystems

I think it's the reiser journal, which was quite large in my case. I don't know if this is normal, or if this is my fault.

`man reiserfstune`?

edit: my /boot is ext2