initramfs and where user space truly begins

Posted Jul 13, 2006 15:44 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313)
In reply to: initramfs and where user space truly begins by nix
Parent article: initramfs and where user space truly begins

however there's still the need (currently) to prepare the initramfs manually before building the kernel.

while it's optional this isn't a problem (I just ignore the option entirely), but if/when it's made mandatory this seperate manual step should be automated.

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initramfs and where user space truly begins

Posted Jul 13, 2006 16:25 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

There's no need to do that, unless by 'prepare' you mean 'tell the kernel build infrastructure which files should go into initramfs'. I can see no way to automate *that* without eliminating all the configurability (of course there should be a default that uses kinit if kinit becomes mandatory, and the kinit patches do indeed provide such a default).

initramfs and where user space truly begins

Posted Jul 13, 2006 16:40 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

any portions that the kernel requires (kinit for example) need to be pulled in automagicly.

this could be as simple as having a directory under the source three /initramfs such that anything that's in there gets used to create the initramfs (and the kernel compiles kinit and any other required pieces and puts them in there)

or any other method of makeing a default initramfs that provides hooks so that the distros can add their own stuff in.

the point I'm looking for is that today you can make a monolithic kernel by make *config && make and then use the resulting file on any compatable machine and it's sufficiant to boot the machine. if initramfs is made mandatory then it needs to be equally simple to manage.

initramfs and where user space truly begins

Posted Jul 14, 2006 11:55 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

It already is: there is a default initramfs source file which contains everything needed for kinit; you can add stuff to it as you wish.