/boot location

[opticyclic]

I am going to reinstall with LVM, LUKS encryption and a /boot partition.
Does it matter where the /boot partition is?

My thoughts are to leave the 2 primary Windows partitions and encrypt them with TrueCrypt and do all the linux stuff in the extended partition (see below).

Would that work?
Does /boot have to be a primary partition?
Should /boot be the first partition on the disk?
Would it matter if /boot was an unencrypted logical partition in the middle of the disk in the Extended partition?

Currently my setup looks like this:


root@PartedMagic:~# parted /dev/sda print

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 53.7GB 53.7GB primary ntfs boot
2 53.7GB 107GB 53.7GB primary ntfs
3 107GB 160GB 52.7GB extended lba
5 107GB 146GB 38.7GB logical ext4
6 146GB 151GB 5369MB logical ext4
7 151GB 158GB 6107MB logical ext4
8 158GB 160GB 2147MB logical linux-swap(v1)



root@PartedMagic:~# sfdisk -l

Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 0+ 6526 6527- 52428096 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 6527 13053- 6527- 52428120+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 13054+ 19457- 6404- 51433730 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda4 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/sda5 13054+ 17759- 4706- 37800848 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 17760+ 18412- 653- 5242880 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 18413+ 19155- 743- 5963776 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 19196+ 19457- 262- 2097152 82 Linux swap / Solaris

[andrewthomas]

Does /boot have to be a primary partition? no
Should /boot be the first partition on the disk? no
Would it matter if /boot was an unencrypted logical partition in the middle of the disk in the Extended partition? no

[opticyclic]

Cool. Thanks for the quick reply.
I'll create a 100MB /boot partition in the extended partition then see how difficult the LVM and LUKS is to setup.