Re: Make ipconfig.c work as a loadable module.

[Chris Dukes <pakrat@www.uk.linux.org>]

On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 12:08:16AM +0000, Russell King wrote:
> > 
> > You can build the dhcp client with glibc static into your initrd. Its hardly
> > magic or special programs or random garbage, and last time I counted it came
> > to one program. Dunno what the other 999 utilities your dhcp needs are ?
> 
> How about mount for nfs-root, a shell and a shell script to supply the
> correct parameters to mount so it doesn't go and try to mount the
> nfs-root with locking enabled - oh, and a few programs like sed and
> so forth to pull the mount parameters out of the dhcp client output,
> if there is such an output.

If IBM can fit a kernel and a ramdisk containing all the utilities you
describe and more in smaller than 5M of file for tftp, one would think 
that it could be done on Linux.
> 
> ipconfig.c does more than just configure networking.  It's a far smaller
> solution to NFS-root than any userspace implementation could ever hope
> to be.

That's nice.  Would you mind explaining to us where that would be a
benefit?  Aside from dead header space in elf executables, I'm at
a loss as to how a usermode implementation must be significantly
larger than kernel code.

-- 
Chris Dukes
I tried being reasonable once--I didn't like it.