Jeremy Katz <katzj@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> On Dec 19, 2008, at 10:27 AM, Theodore Tso wrote:
>> On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 02:55:26PM +0100, Hannes Reinecke wrote:
>>>
>>> The goal of the initrd is to activate and mount the root fs.
>>> And the root fs _only_. Every other system should be configured
>>> once the main system is running.
[...]
>> There may also be times when it is useful to operate on the root
>> filesystem in some way before it is mounted; in most cases the
>> operation can bedone on a filesystem mounted read-only, yes --- but at
>> the cost of needing to reboot afterwards if the root filesystem needs
>> to be modified by said userspace tool.
>
> I think that once you start getting into this realm, though, you end
> up with an incredibly over-complicated and slow initramfs. If we
> instead focus on keeping things "fast", the reboot afterwards isn't
> that costly.
One of the features of the Debian / Ubuntu initramfs infrastructure,
which sounds remarkably like your design (or vice-versa), is that it
drops all the "standard" drivers into the initramfs.
This is, to me, worth several minutes of additional boot time, in terms
of flexibility: being able to modify the hardware and be confident that
the appropriate drivers are in place already makes life much, much
easier.
(In practice I doubt this adds more than a second or five to boot time;
certainly, it takes no longer to get to rootfs mounted than the RHEL 4
systems that have nothing but what is essential in the initrd...)
So, it would certainly be my hope — with my systems administration hat
on — that your proposed system would support that similar operation as
an option, at least.
Personally, I think it makes the right default: better correct than
fast, but obviously tastes vary there.
Regards,
Daniel
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe initramfs" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
