Calum, it is best to use a /boot partition. Even if you don't put "/boot" on a separate partition most distros still create that directory and put the kernel, the initrd and other boot stuff there. On older RedHat releases it was actually called "/bpart" but they changed the name to /boot. Most systems, even BSD are set up this way. If they don't name the directory/partition "/boot" it is some similar name that serves the same purpose. The reason it is good to have a boot partition is because some boot loaders have a hard time booting if the kernel is more than 1024 cylinders from the beginning of the drive and with todays larger drives that is a good possibility.
[edit] and obviously you want to put the small /boot partition as the first partition on the drive, or as close to the beginning of the drive as possible.
[edit2] even NT can have problems booting from a large system drive under certain conditions, normally on NT servers you create a smaller system partition (C: @ ~2GB) and create larger non-bootable partitions.
[ June 24, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]
