A bit perplexed...

[Jeff Vian]

On Wed, 2005-02-09 at 19:53 -0500, Kanwar Ranbir Sandhu wrote:
> 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

/ is the root of all your filesystems.

> everything installed on it (/root, /usr, /etc, /var and so on, excluding
> of course /boot and swap) in one partition.
> 

That is the common layout for home use.  Except many also have /home as
a separate filesystem/partition so data can be saved when doing a new
install.

> 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.
> 
This setup _*requires*_ another partition as /.  You can have as many
additional partitions as desired, but MUST have /.
Your list above thus requires at least 9 partitions (/ and swap are not
listed).

Every partition you mount is a filesystem, and all are mounted on a
mount point (subdirectory) of / or below.

> 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
>