Re: R: Re: Subvolumes and /proc/self/mountinfo

H. Peter Anvin
2012-06-20T21:49:18Z

On 06/20/2012 11:06 AM, Goffredo Baroncelli wrote:
>
> Am not saying that we *should* move the kernel away from /boot. I am
> only saying that having the kernel near /lib/modules *has* some advantages.
>
> Few year ago there are some gains to have a separate /boot (ah, the time
> when the bios were unable to address the bigger disk), where there are
> the minimum things to bootstrap the system.
>

There still is (in fact this exact problem has made a comeback, as there
are plenty of BIOSes which have bugs above the 2 TB mark); however,
there are also issues with RAID (firmware often cannot address all the
devices in the system -- and no, that isn''t ancient history, I have a
system exactly like that that I bought last year), remote boot media
(your / might be on an iSCSI device, or even a network filesystem!) and
all kinds of situations like that.

The bottom line is that /boot is what the bootloader needs to be able to
address, whereas / can wait until the kernel has device drivers.  That
is a *HUGE* difference.

> Now we have the possibility to move the kernel near the modules, and
> this could lead some interesting possibility: think about different
> linux installations, with an own kernel version and an own modules
> version; what are the reasons to put together under /boot different
> kernel which potential conflicting names ? de facto standard ?
> historical reasons ? Nothing wrong here; but also the idea to moving the
> kernel under /lib/modules is not so wrong.

No, it is completely, totally and very very seriously wrong.

	-hpa

--
H. Peter Anvin, Intel Open Source Technology Center
I work for Intel.  I don''t speak on their behalf.