linux boot question

[MSwift]

RHEL 5, I have a question. One of our boxes booted and i did not notice a /boot mount point. is it possible to boot a RHEL 5 box without a /boot?

Thanks

Mike.

[FLQ]

Hi Mike,

yes, you dont need /boot to boot. Grub always finds a way ;-)

Since grub doesn't know about the filesystem layout, it uses offset on the device to find the kernel.


HTH

[Matti_Kurkela]

It is not mandatory to have /boot as a separate partition: it can also be just a sub-directory on the root filesystem.

In fact, if you customize your bootloader configuration, you can put the kernel and initrd files anywhere the bootloader can access. Of course, RedHat's kernel update RPMs will always place new kernels to /boot: if you've moved your actual boot files somewhere else, you'll have to do extra work each time you install a kernel update.

MK