Re: [BK PATCHES] initramfs merge, part 1 of N

H. Peter Anvin
2002-11-02T08:44:41Z

Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Aaron Lehmann wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Nov 02, 2002 at 03:13:45AM -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
>>
>>
>>> The Future.
>>>
>>> Early userspace is going to be merged in a series of evolutionary
>>> changes, following what I call "The Al Viro model." NO KERNEL
>>> BEHAVIOR SHOULD CHANGE. [that's for the lkml listeners, not you
>>> <g>] "make" will continue to simply Do The Right Thing(tm) on all
>>> platforms, while the kernel image continues to get progressively
>>> smaller.
>>>
>>
>>
>> Won't the initial userspace be linked into the kernel? If so, why will
>> the kernel image get smaller?
>>
>>
>
> Yes and no ;-)
>
> Ignoring for a moment initramfses loaded from your bootloader (a la
> initrd)... The amount of code that runs in kernel space shrinks, which
> is the main point of early userspace. If you are talking in terms of
> overall kernel image size, yes, but the initramfs cpio archive is
> ditching along with the rest of __init code, so you're really only
> talking about wasting a couple of additional pages in vmlinux -- a
> slight increase in disk space usage, and that's it.
>
> So runtime memory usage certainly does not increase...
>

By the way, the final initramfs should typically be a union of whatever
sources there are; with the ones linked into the kernel image unpacked
first (so they can be overwritten if so specified to the bootloader.)

-hpa