On 01/11/2014 01:27 PM, olivier.lahaye1@xxxxxxx wrote: > > Hi, > > Please forgive me if this is the wrong list to post, but I didn't find any > other places to ask what I'm looking for regarding advanced usage of dracut. > > > I'm part of systemimager developpers, a tool to build and deploy linux images > on computers (often used in clusters to deploy nodes). > > This perl software is building it's own initramfs from scratch (build kernel > and all content), unfortunately, this is problematic as it needs a recent > kernel to support latest hardware.(detect disk or net adapters) > Unfortunateley, trying to build everything on an rhel6 distro for example > will result in bad binaries. Indeed, if we build kernel 3.10 on a 2.6 kernel > (it works), but then building lvm tools (bad binaries) as the tools will be > built with kernel 2.6 system includes and run on a 3.10 kernel resulting at > best in crashes and at worse in data loss. More over, it is based on udev > only (no systemd or network manager). thus, now it's even more difficult to > build it (difficult to build udev without systemd, ...) > > My aim would be to drop this old way of doing stuff and use dracut to build a > bootable image using system installed binaries. Indeed, this image is only > used to boot the node, create disk partition table, format partitions, init > network download some post install scripts, start a custom deployment > monitoring daemon and copy the image from server using preconfigured method > (either rsync, nfs, bittorrent, ...) (and reboot) As linux vendors are > backporting support for latest hardware, having the latest binaries is not > needed anymore. using booted system materials will be sufficient. > > For example, here is the actual content of the initrd_template we are using: > http://olivier.lahaye1.free.fr/OSCAR/initrd_template.txt It has no second > stage and it is far from being optimized but it does more or less what we > need. > > Despite my googleing, I've been unable to find examples other than creating a > basic initial ramdisk for booting an installed OS. I was even unable to find > how the fedora or redhat pxe boot image were created (and how they are > built). > > what I'm looking for would be some sort of comand that would do: > > dracut --include-all-network-drivers --include-all-disk-drivers > --include-nfsandother_drivers > --put_what_is_needed_for_an_advanced_initramfs(udev+systemd+networkmanager+...) > --put_buzybox --add_binaries_from_running_system <list_of_binaries.txt> > --add_binaries_required_libs_from_system --add_other_files > --start_inital_system_tasks_like_systemd_then_jump_to_our_rcS_script > > I'd greatly apreciate any help, tip on how to proceed or even pointer to > pages describing how the distro installation initial pxe disks are build (for > example how the code calling the second stage is put into the image and from > when it is taken from). > > Best regards. > https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/dracut/dracut.html https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/dracut/dracut.html#NetworkBoot -- 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
