A bit perplexed...

[Kanwar Ranbir Sandhu]

Hi Everyone,

Here's something I've had a bit of a problem figuring out.

When someone says the "root filesystem", I automatically think of / and
everything installed on it (/root, /usr, /etc, /var and so on, excluding
of course /boot and swap) in one partition.

I usually setup my systems like so:

/boot /dev/sdXX
/root /dev/sdXX
/usr  /dev/sdXX
/etc  /dev/sdXX
/var  /dev/sdXX
/home /dev/sdXX
/tmp  /dev/sdXX

Or better yet, use LVM.

In this scenario, what would the root filesystem be?  Everything else
that doesn't have it's own partition? Does it still refer
to /usr, /etc, /var etc., even though they reside on their own
partitions (I'm thinking it's this last one)?

If you're wondering why I'm asking, I've been considering trying out
OpenSSI on Fedora Core 2. One of OpenSSI's neat features is it's ability
to have root filesystem failover.  If the root node goes down, another
one can take over as long as that node has been setup to use the shared
root filesystem (it has to be installed on some type of network
storage).

I've just been wondering what happens if the root filesystem is spread
across several partitions, which led me to confusing myself about what
"root filesystem" actually means.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Ranbir
-- 
Kanwar Ranbir Sandhu
Systems Aligned Inc.
www.systemsaligned.com