Dave Dodge wrote:
On Wed, Sep 15, 2004 at 10:25:31PM +0200, Olaf Hering wrote:
root on nfs
root on iscsi
There are probably some other networked options. For example root
on nbd has been tried here:
http://borderworlds.dk/projects/#nr
How about copying root into a ramdisk from an ftp/tftp/http server?
Someone in a thin-client environment might try something like that.
Also: root on encrypted loop. There are several basic encryption
options, including (I think) whose module you use. There are lots of
ways the key might be acquired: interactively from keyboard, floppy,
USB storage, smart card, and so on.
One thing about having a "standard" initramfs solution: it needs to be
flexible enough to allow customizations. After all, one of the big
advantages to pushing this stuff into initramfs is that it's a lot
easier for people to modify than mucking with the kernel directly.
I'd go even stronger: I think a "standard initramfs" needs to have
well-defined hooks, so one can upgrade to the next initramfs image
without having to re-do all the customizations. This is pretty easy,
it's usually a matter of looking for subfiles and invoking them if present.
One more thing that worth nothing: I have been warned that there are
some platforms with some pretty egregorious limits on the boot image
size. Thus, there needs to be a solution for the people who simply
cannot add a large amount to the kernel image size.
-hpa
