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

Tom Rini
2002-01-10T00:03:26Z

On Wed, Jan 09, 2002 at 12:25:37PM -0800, Torrey Hoffman wrote:

> One of the neat things about moving a lot of this formerly in-kernel
> boot stuff to userspace is that it will be easier to do interesting
> customization of the boot process, without having to hack the kernel.

Right. But in doing this we also don't want to bloat the very small
programs/functionality we currently hack directly in

> I'm sure that this will be used in lots of innovative ways that people
> haven't even thought of yet.

Yes, but how many of these require a 'klibc' ? One of the other tiny
libcs is probably a better bet for any sort of 'large' project. IMHO,
the klibc stuff should be just big enough to support the 'normal' cases,
ie stuff we do now and related.

> So, I guess what I'd like to see with the initramfs build system is a
> easy way to build little apps like sfdisk and mkreiserfs against the
> libc it (normally) uses and add them to the ramdisk.

Well, occording to the spec file hpa posted, it's just a cpio(1)
archive, so anything is possible.

--
Tom Rini (TR1265)