From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from mx2.suse.de ([195.135.220.15]:45398 "EHLO mx1.suse.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-FAIL) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1726665AbeKUTjr (ORCPT ); Wed, 21 Nov 2018 14:39:47 -0500 Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2018 10:06:03 +0100 From: Jean Delvare Subject: Re: Backed up kernels Message-ID: <20181121100603.5afd53ed@endymion> In-Reply-To: References: <20181120144007.016e4998@endymion> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kbuild-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: To: Masahiro Yamada Cc: Michal Marek , Linux Kbuild mailing list , martin.wilck@suse.com, Linux Kernel Mailing List Hi Masahiro, On Wed, 21 Nov 2018 15:59:49 +0900, Masahiro Yamada wrote: > On Tue, Nov 20, 2018 at 10:40 PM Jean Delvare wrote: > > Therefore I am asking, can we change "make install" so that it does NOT > > create a backup copy of an existing kernel? > > I think your suggestion makes sense, > but "make install" is basically implemented > by arch-specific shell script. > (For example, arch/x86/boot/install.sh) Thanks for the pointer. However I have a hard time believing that the script above is what is run when I call "make install". It looks pretty old, doesn't support kernel files with version strings, and only knows of lilo as a boot loader. But I see there is a hook at the beginning for a user or distribution provided install script: if [ -x ~/bin/${INSTALLKERNEL} ]; then exec ~/bin/${INSTALLKERNEL} "$@"; fi if [ -x /sbin/${INSTALLKERNEL} ]; then exec /sbin/${INSTALLKERNEL} "$@"; fi So I guess that what I really care about is the /sbin/installkernel script on my system, which is part of the dracut package. Which means I must talk to the dracut package maintainer of my distribution. > Will you talk to the maintainers > of architecture you are interested in? > > (or send it to linux-arch@vger.kernel.org) It doesn't seem x86-specific, as apparently a lot of code was copy-and-pasted across architectures over time. It probably doesn't make sense to change it on one architecture and not on the others. Also, if anyone is using these basic kernel-provided installation scripts, then keeping a backup may actually make sense, because the kernel files have no version strings, so a new kernel would always overwrite the previous one, only leaving one kernel in place. If that kernel doesn't boot for whatever reason, then game over. So I think we should leave things as is on the kernel side. Thanks again, -- Jean Delvare SUSE L3 Support