[NTLUG:Discuss] bootable flag

[Leroy Tennison]

richard witt wrote:
> On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 11:00 AM, Chris Cox <cjcox at acm.org> wrote:
>> On Wed, 2009-05-27 at 05:26 -0500, Ralph Green wrote:
>>> Howdy,
>>>  I almost always create a /boot partition when I setup a system.  I have
>>> been setting that partition with the bootable flag when I am given the
>>> choice.  It seems to work, but I am suspecting that it is more accurate
>>> to set the / partition to be bootable.  What do you think?
>> If your machine is 5 (probably 7+ years actually) years or old or more,
>> then the purpose of /boot was to make sure the boot area resided in
>> the lower tracks of the HD so that old BIOS's could handle it.
>>
>> Hasn't been an issue for a LONG time though.
>>
>> I still do /boot though.  I make it small and use ext2 to avoid
>> journal overhead (50MB < /boot < 100MB).
>>
>> So... nothing necessarily wrong with just using /.  I have several
>> fat root setups in place... but sometimes I regret them, for other
>> reasons besides /boot though.
> 
> I also use /boot with an ext2 setup and i also set it to no auto
> mount. I do this more for safety that i dont accidentally screw up the
> kernel(s) that reside there and hopefully will still have working
> kernels should i somehow hose the system and need to rescue it.
> 
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Don't know how your system is set up but I just installed Debian (just 
to see what it was like) and none of my partitions is bootable.  I seem 
to remember that, if the boot loader is written to the MBR of the drive, 
you don't need a partition marked bootable.