Installing FC5 on pre-partitioned /dev/hdb

[Jeff Vian]

On Mon, 2006-04-03 at 10:45 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-04-03 at 10:22, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Monday 03 April 2006 10:03, Paul Howarth wrote:
> > >Gene Heskett wrote:
> > >> And add one more.
> > >>
> > >> 4) Since when is it illegal to have a seperate root partition?  DD
> > >> forced me to make root a directory on /, and I've never run that way
> > >> in 8 years.  I'll bruteforce it because the partition is there,
> > >> without a label since DD wouldn't let me use it, IF there is no good
> > >> reason for changing to a dir on / in the first place.
> > >
> > >Presumably you mean a "/root partition" rather than a "root partition"
> > >(which I'd read as being for "/")?
> > >
> > >I guess it's for similar reasons to ensuring that /etc lives on the
> > > root partition, to ensure that root's environment is present and sane
> > > when no other partitions are mounted (e.g. in single user mode).
> > >
> > >Paul.
> > 
> > I was under the impression (and no idea where I heard/read that now) 
> > that any partitions marked 0 0 on the end of the fstab line were 
> > mounted in 'single' mode.  Is this not the case?  I haven't used single 
> > with this FC2 install ever, no need to so far, so I don't know, but 
> > I'll find out the next time I reboot to it.
> 
see below.  Nothing with a 0 0 should ever be required to be mounted in
single user mode (although they might be.)  AFAIK / is the only
filesystem that *must* be mounted in single user mode.  However, I have
not checked to see how mine works in that respect for a _long_ time. 

> It's whether and when to run the fsck if the filesystem wasn't
> unmounted cleanly.  1 1 means do it first do it first, before
> remounting / in rw mode, 1 2 means do it after / is remounted
> and the ones with the same number can be run in parallel. 0 0
> is for something that doesn't need to be checked, like a network
> mount.
> 
Your description here is mostly correct but only the last field relates
to the fsck.  Telling how you got the information is more educational
than just providing information, especially when not complete.

Man fstab will tell you _exactly what each field in fstab means, and I
quote: 

The fifth field, (fs_freq),  is  used  for  these  filesystems  by  the
dump(8)  command  to determine which filesystems need to be dumped.  If
the fifth field is not present, a value of zero is  returned  and  dump
will assume that the filesystem does not need to be dumped.

The  sixth field, (fs_passno), is used by the fsck(8) program to deter-
mine the order in which filesystem checks are done at reboot time.  The
root  filesystem  should  be specified with a fs_passno of 1, and other
filesystems should have a fs_passno of 2.  Filesystems within  a  drive
will  be checked sequentially, but filesystems on different drives will
be checked at the same time to utilize  parallelism  available  in  the
hardware.   If  the sixth field is not present or zero, a value of zero
is returned and fsck will assume that the filesystem does not  need  to
be checked.

> You generally want /root to be available when you log in
> for diagnostics, which might be needed sometime when none
> of the other filesystems can be mounted.   However, if you
> know how to boot the install CD in rescue mode you don't have
> to worry so much about being able to do diagnostics.
> 
> -- 
>   Les Mikesell
>    lesmikesell at gmail.com
> 
>