/etc in separate partition?

[cybermatthieu]

Hi,
I just reeinstalled my system after a hd crash. Got a new 300gb so I figured that it whould be nice to split it properly. So I tried to have my /etc on a seperate partition, but at the boot the kernel stop saying :
No inittab file found

After I just copied all my files from my /etc partition to the /etc folder on the / partion. And it booted! Is there any way we could have a /etc on a seperate partition in Gentoo. I know that the BSD people are doing it...

Thanks,
Matt

[papal_authority]

AFAIK, etc should always be mounted on the / partition as many boot up files are found there. Why do you want it on a seperate partiton? It's usually less than 50MB anyways
_________________
The free market gave me gonorrhea.

[cybermatthieu]

After checking out FreeBSD, I thought it could be nice to have it separated... I think that I'll have to find a partition resizer.

But it's posible right?

Again, I'm amased how fast this forum is!

Thanks for the super quick response!

Matt

[rsa4046]

Wouldn't this require more than one partition to be mounted at boot time? I think /etc /bin and /lib (and possibly /usr/lib) need to exist on the same parition because init needs access to these files at boot, and only / is mounted at this time. Since the root partition must never run out of space, it's probably easier to place other things that are likely to grow on separate partitions (/tmp, /var, /home, and so on).

[papal_authority]

I run FreeBSD, Solaris and Linux and I've never heard of doing that. I think it'd be quite difficult what with grub.conf, lilo.conf, fstab, inittab, the rc scripts and other files needed at boot being in the etc directory. I do back up my etc directory weekly via cron though and store it in a seperate partition. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I think it'd be really tricky and not worth the hassle unless you love a challenge
_________________
The free market gave me gonorrhea.