size/type of boot partition

lotusvale · Guru Joined: 06 Mar 2003 Posts: 339 Location: Canada

i was just wondering, what's a good size and type for /boot? i set it to 100 mb with reiserfs, is that okay?

also, do i just do :
#dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda1 bs=1K count=1?
(my boot is /hda1)
just wanna get it right since it says something like "1+ out 1+ in".

another question is actually about the swap space.
i have 768 physical ram, but i set it to just 512, is that okay?
(actually eventhough i said "512" in cfdisk, it only gave me "509", so i don't know)
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p1t3r05 · n00b Joined: 13 Aug 2003 Posts: 7 Location: Poland, Poznan

size of /boot you must estimate for your system. i've got 30MB and that is ok for me (2 version + monolithic kernel).
100MB will absolutely be enough.
about swap space.
it depend what you plan to do on system, for home use 786MB RAM and 0.5GB swap is ok.
you need more swap space for extramal graphical operations, overloaded server and similar.
i've got 320MB RAM + 500MB swap, but really i don't see that system will use more than 50MB of swap for about 3 month.
but remeber: your mileage may vary

lotusvale · Guru Joined: 06 Mar 2003 Posts: 339 Location: Canada

so how big can the kernel be anyway?
it won't be more than 30 mb right?
maybe i should try resizing it?

so is that right to initialize the first block for /boot? the "dd" command
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Sven Vermeulen · Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2003 6:11 pm Post subject:

A kernel is usually 1.2 Mb - 2.4 Mb, depending on how much you compile in the kernel and as module (the more as modules, the lesser the kernelimage's size is)

lotusvale · Guru Joined: 06 Mar 2003 Posts: 339 Location: Canada

oh ok thx.
btw, does it matter if the boot is type reiserfs or ext2/3?
if i were to use ext3, how do i add the journal?
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ctenet · Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2003 6:27 pm Post subject:

It's a good idea to make it bigger than that so you can have multiple kernels.
Also, remember that every filesystem takes space for itself.
EXT3 journals can be added either at initial format:

p1t3r05 · n00b Joined: 13 Aug 2003 Posts: 7 Location: Poland, Poznan

dirtboy · Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2003 8:35 pm Post subject:

I actually have mine set as FAT32, 10MB. This allows me to write a script that changes the default in grub.conf from both Windows and Linux. It also lets me pass small text files between an NTFS partition and my ext2 / partition.

ctenet · Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2003 12:53 am Post subject:

why not just use ntfs-read support and something like explore2fs (not 100% sure of this name) or the driver that the same person weote for winnt so it can see ext2/3 as a drive (but not write to it)?

ctenet · Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2003 12:55 am Post subject:

dirtboy · Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2003 3:33 am Post subject:

Well, the whole point is to be able to get to my machine remotely and boot into another opsys if I choose to. To be able to do that, both OSes must be able to read and write to /boot in order to change the default in grub.conf, since I won't be there to choose one out of the menu. I have a little windows script called "linboot" that just hops out there and changes the default to linux and reboots. Same for linux in the other direction. Fat32 was just the easiest and I didn't have to install anything extra.

p1t3r05 · n00b Joined: 13 Aug 2003 Posts: 7 Location: Poland, Poznan