On Sat, 2011-11-05 at 08:25 -0700, Joe Zeff wrote: > For a partition to be bootable, it has to have the appropriate files on > it to boot your computer. Can you give me one reason why you'd want to > have those files in /home, even if it is on its own partition, as it is > on my computers? Yes, I can. I have a system with Windows dual boot, and I want to be able to hibernate Linux, boot into Windows, and then resume Linux from hibernation. With recent versions of Fedora, this is not possible from the standard grub configuration, because hibernating does something to the master boot loader block that causes it to boot immediately into the same Linux kernel that was hibernated, rather than presenting the usual boot menu. I do not have the option of booting Windows instead. This is done to prevent someone from accidentally booting the wrong kernel, thus clobbering their hibernation info. That is rather like shutting down the computer by pulling the plug out of the wall, which can obviously have bad consequences. Unfortunately, this safeguard does get in the way of my desire to hibernate Linux and boot into Windows. So I get around this by booting from /home. The master boot block contains pointers to the /home boot configuration that has nothing in it but chainloaders. Then grub inside Fedora is installed only on the Fedora root partition. This only requires that the contents of /boot/grub be copied to /home/boot/grub, /home/boot/grub/grub.conf be edited appropriately, and that grub be installed on the master boot sector with root pointed at the /home partition. Doing it this way, when I fire up the machine, I am given a choice of Fedora or Windows. If I select Windows, then Windows will boot and run normally. If I select Fedora, then the boot block from the Fedora partition is loaded, the hibernated kernel immediately boots, and all is as I want it to be. That can also work with multiple Linux systems booting, as long as they do not share any swap partitions. So this is at least one reason why someone might want to boot from /home. It does, of course, require that you be comfortable playing around with boot loaders, and be comfortable reinstalling the master boot block from a rescue CD or DVD (in case you screw up, which of course I have done and had to recover this way). --Greg -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
