> One of the purposes of /rescue is to be used as an alternate set of
> tools even if almost everything else is non functional, including
> /sbin/init.  This means that /rescue cannot effectively be on another
> partition...

That needn't be true, but then you need more than just /rescue.

My netwinder has a completely separate 'rescue' partition, that has a 
kernel and a minimal set of tools.  The idea is that you *never* update 
that (or only very rarely); you never mount it normally either.  Then when 
things really go pear shaped you tell the BIOS to boot from that instead 
of the normal partition and mount your screwed up world on that so that 
you can fix it all up.

The main advantage of that approach is that it avoids some of the cases 
where you've screwed up /dev, say, and can nolonger boot from your main 
partition at all.  But the cost is more disk space since you need a 
kernel, /etc, and other bits and bobs on it.

It's sort of like a 'floppy on the hard disk'.

R.