Re: Dracut -- Cross distribution initramfs infrastructure

[Karel Zak <kzak-H+wXaHxf7aLQT0dZR+AlfA@public.gmane.org>]

On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 09:29:51PM +0100, Kay Sievers wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 20:48, Jeremy Katz <katzj-H+wXaHxf7aLQT0dZR+AlfA@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > On Wed, 2008-12-17 at 14:31 -0500, Neil Horman wrote:
> >> Not that I don't think a unifying tool to create an initramfs is a bad idea

 I'm personally very happy to see that someone is trying to work on
 distro-independent solution. Really.

> >> looks like a good start on standardizing the initramfs for the nominal case.  Do
> >> you have plans to include (or are you interested in including) support for
> >> alternate infrastructure (like busybox instead of nash), interactive setup, etc?
> >
> > Well, the use of nash right now is due to the fact that there isn't
> > historically any switchroot utility shipped in util-linux.  Hopefully

 util-linux-ng is open for arbitrary low-level stuff that makes sense
 for more distributions.

> > busybox, etc are really all just extra pain as compared to using real
> > system utilities... once you accept that you're dynamically linked,
> > you're better off just maintaining one set of the utilities as opposed
> > to having one set in coreutils and one set in busybox.
> 
> Busybox is nice as an option to be able to rescue/hack. It should
> definitely be provided as an optional "plugin" for people who need it.
> But there is no chance to depend on it by default, for the very same
> reason klibc, or any other libc is not an option.

 Note, some tools from uti-linux-ng is possible to link against klibc,
 and the whole package should be possible to rebuild on systems with
 uClibc, but the official goal is glibc.

> We need to use tools in initramfs which will not work realibly, or not
> at all, with other libcs. We will have one dynamic glibc there anyway,
> so there is no valid reason to also use any single statically linked
> binary, or any other libc by default. Really, it's just nice to use
> the same environment in the real root and in initramfs, and you also
> get the smallest possible size that way, if you need to include only a
> single "advanced" tool.

 Yeah.

 I don't like nash too much (sorry RH:-). The single "advanced" tools
 usually suck in mainstream distributions -- it's a way how duplicate
 code, how maintain two different environments, etc... My tiny network
 router uses busybox, but I don't think that my workstation with 2GB
 of RAM has to use a special single "advanced" tool when my
 distribution includes coreutils, util-linux and udev.

    Karel

-- 
 Karel Zak  <kzak-H+wXaHxf7aLQT0dZR+AlfA@public.gmane.org>
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