Re: [klibc] klibc and what's the next step?

H. Peter Anvin
2006-07-11T16:24:26Z

Olaf Hering wrote:
>
>>> The other group is the one that uses some sort of initrd (loop mount or cpio),
>>> created with tools from their distribution.
>>> Again, they should install that kinit binary as well because kinit emulates
>>> the loop mount handling of /initrd.image. This is for older distributions
>>> that still create a loop mounted initrd.
>> There's no need for loop-mounting of any initrd.images. Initramfs (cpio image,
>> possible gzipped) works just fine, and it will NOT go away because something
>> should do the unpacking/loading of that image so that kinit &Co will run.
>> There's no need for old initrd+pivot_root at all. Only the ones who are,
>> for some reason, didn't switch to initramfs yet. And I personally see no
>> reasons not to switch - initramfs (rootfs) concept is much more clean and
>> easy to handle and gives more possibilities than initrd.
>
> Are you saying that everyone now suddenly is forced to use a cpio image?
> Why did hpa add the loop mount code to kinit?
> So if you force people who build kernels to use newer tools, one more
> external binary will surely not hurt.

When you say "loop mount code" I presume you mean legacy initrd support
(which doesn't use loop mounting.) Legacy initrd support is provided to
be as compatible as possible, obviously.

And yes, it should be a configurable. Chopping kinit into configurable
pieces is on my short list.

-hpa