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I have Centos VM on VMware Workstation. I commented the /boot entry in the /etc/fstab for testing purposes. But I found that the system gets boot UP with unmounted /boot file system. How the system get the boot partition info in booting process, if it was not there? Why does not it take to emergency mode?

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  • The system gets booted by the bootloader (whatever it is for your Centos). The /boot entry in /etc/fstab is only there so the booted system can put files in there to update the OS. The bootloader itself doesn't need this entry, at all.
    – dirkt
    Commented Aug 19, 2021 at 19:10

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The /boot partition, while not strictly need for system startup, is an important one and should be mounted. Let me do two simple examples of when it is needed:

  1. Kernel recompile: you will find that your boot partition hosts some files called config-*. These files describe the kernel configuration, and are re-read when issuing make menuconfig (and similar) when recompiling your kernel. While it is true that this is not the only method to store kernel configuration, it surely is one of the most used/common.

  2. Upgrades: when you upgrade your distro, the packet manager will eventually download a new kernel and install it under /boot. If /boot is not mounted, these boot files will be placed in the wrong filesystem and Grub will not recognize them.

In the end, while you surely can have a running system without /boot, this is not a good idea. At least, you should always mount it when needed - if you know that.

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  • Thank you so much, Madhubala
    – cybermizz
    Commented Aug 20, 2021 at 14:50

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