On Tue, Jul 10, 2007 at 08:35:41PM +0300, Dan Aloni wrote: > On Tue, Jul 10, 2007 at 01:17:40PM -0400, Neil Horman wrote: > > On Tue, Jul 10, 2007 at 08:30:37PM +0530, Vivek Goyal wrote: > > > I am still thinking that why can't we change initrd building process > > > (Be it mkinitrd or mkdumprd depending on distriution). Whole idea is > > > that while building an initrd/initramfs for the first kernel, one will > > > ask user for kdump kernel (if user wishes to load kdump kenrel through > > > initrd) and then it will generate kdump kenrel's initrd and pack into > > > first kernel's initrd. > > > > > > So steps would look something like this. > > > > > > - mkinitrd takes second kernel's vmlinux as argument > > > - mkinitrd runs "makedumpfile -g" on debug version of first kernel's vmlinux. > > > - mkinitrd generates the initramfs for kdump kernel and packs output > > > of "makedumpfile -g" into that. > > > - mkinitrd packs statically linked kexec, kdump kernel vmlinux/bzImage, > > > and kdump kernel initramfs into first kernel's initramfs. > > > > > Agreed, this is exactly what happens right now. > > Isn't there some sort of a circular dependency going on here? As I > understand it the vmlinux binary already contains the initramfs as > built-in data (at least that's what I use here for initramfs). It You're misunderstood. The vmlinux binary and the initramfs are stored in the same protected memory area when you execute a kexec -l, but they are separate and distinct files. > makes more sense if you guys are creating an _initrd_ image (that's > what mkinitrd originally did AFAIK) and supply it to the boot-loader. initrd is old, initramfs is the new way to go, but they effecitvley do the same thing, and while the initramfs _can_ be built into the kernel, it can also be separately managed (which is what most distros tend to do, AFAICS). Neil > > -- > Dan Aloni > XIV LTD, http://www.xivstorage.com > da-x (at) monatomic.org, dan (at) xiv.co.il -- /*************************************************** *Neil Horman *Software Engineer *Red Hat, Inc. *nhorman at redhat.com *gpg keyid: 1024D / 0x92A74FA1 *http://pgp.mit.edu ***************************************************/
