From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Daniel Pittman Subject: Re: Dracut -- Cross distribution initramfs infrastructure Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:50:21 +1100 Message-ID: <87skojrm5e.fsf@rimspace.net> References: <1229540094.28858.150.camel@aglarond.local> <20081217190700.GA15377@infradead.org> <4949FD67.6040906@suse.de> <494B5031.5080306@bfh.ch> <20081219091841.207bc951@kopernikus.site> <494BA7CE.2020007@suse.de> <20081219152708.GE9871@mit.edu> <9C4F1B7D-CCBC-48D7-8624-9A7C314C1590@redhat.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Return-path: In-Reply-To: <9C4F1B7D-CCBC-48D7-8624-9A7C314C1590-H+wXaHxf7aLQT0dZR+AlfA@public.gmane.org> (Jeremy Katz's message of "Fri, 19 Dec 2008 11:56:47 -0500") Sender: initramfs-owner-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org List-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" To: Jeremy Katz Cc: Theodore Tso , initramfs-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org, linux-kernel-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org Jeremy Katz writes: > On Dec 19, 2008, at 10:27 AM, Theodore Tso wrote: >> On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 02:55:26PM +0100, Hannes Reinecke wrote: >>> >>> The goal of the initrd is to activate and mount the root fs. >>> And the root fs _only_. Every other system should be configured >>> once the main system is running. [...] >> There may also be times when it is useful to operate on the root >> filesystem in some way before it is mounted; in most cases the >> operation can bedone on a filesystem mounted read-only, yes --- but = at >> the cost of needing to reboot afterwards if the root filesystem need= s >> to be modified by said userspace tool. > > I think that once you start getting into this realm, though, you end > up with an incredibly over-complicated and slow initramfs. If we > instead focus on keeping things "fast", the reboot afterwards isn't > that costly. One of the features of the Debian / Ubuntu initramfs infrastructure, which sounds remarkably like your design (or vice-versa), is that it drops all the "standard" drivers into the initramfs. This is, to me, worth several minutes of additional boot time, in terms of flexibility: being able to modify the hardware and be confident that the appropriate drivers are in place already makes life much, much easier. (In practice I doubt this adds more than a second or five to boot time; certainly, it takes no longer to get to rootfs mounted than the RHEL 4 systems that have nothing but what is essential in the initrd...) So, it would certainly be my hope =E2=80=94 with my systems administrat= ion hat on =E2=80=94 that your proposed system would support that similar opera= tion as an option, at least. Personally, I think it makes the right default: better correct than fast, but obviously tastes vary there. Regards, Daniel -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe initramfs" in the body of a message to majordomo-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html