Re: initramfs programs (was [RFC] klibc requirements)

[Andreas Ferber <aferber@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de>]

On Wed, Jan 09, 2002 at 04:56:58PM -0500, Eric S. Raymond wrote:

> > That's the way it works for network daemons etc. for years.
> This sounds like good advice.  The autoconfigurator is part of CML2,
> which I expect to be distributed with the kernel.  Does that change 
> your advice at all?

Yes, a little bit. Make dmidecode (or whatever you also need for
preparation steps that have to be done as root) a separate package,
which has to be installed before "make autoconfig" works, and write
that down in Documentation/Changes.

This gives you several benefits:

- you don't depend on the version of the /running/ kernel for "make
  autoconfig" to work (/dev/kmem is available for a /long/ time now).
- you can install and run dmidecode on one machine, copy the retrieved
  data to another machine and autoconfigure/build the kernel there.

Distributions can install the package by default, to make it work for
your grandmother as well, if that's what you want.

Andreas
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