Hi Laurent.
I am using initramfs with static Busybox on VME Single Board
Computers. These are used as servers and can be plugged into various
locations where there is a dedicated NFS server. A USB or sata disk can
also be connected. The kernel boots from onboard flash and the console
is a serial port.
The user-space code in the initramfs configures the network,
requests its own hostname from DNS, detects available bootable
filesystems (disk or NFS), figures out from a list at which address
there might be an NFS server, then presents a list of systems to boot to
-- after 15 seconds, selects the first in the list -- Then mounts proc,
sys and dev in the mounted filesystem, and switch_root to /sbin/init.
The mounted filesystem is currently Debian-7.
I apreciate your knowledge of Linux and the boot process. But about
the usefullness of initramfs, I think you are wrong. I don't think I
could do the job without it.
Didier
Le 16/12/2013 09:05, Laurent Bercot a écrit :
On 2013-12-16 01:08, Rob Landley wrote:
The most recent kernel has my initmpfs patches, meaning initramfs
can now be a tmpfs instead of ramfs.
[snip blurb]
You're listing reasons why initramfs (or initmpfs, if you prefer) is
more logical than it was before, more convenient, etc. All this may be
true, but it does not mean initramfs is actually *useful*.
I have yet to see a case where initramfs is really needed. Every time
I've seen a system boot on initramfs, the same goals could have been
achieved via booting on the real root filesystem and doing work during
initialization, which implies a lot less code, and is more maintainable,
and safer (if something fails early on).
I liked initramfs back in the day. It looked flexible and powerful,
which it is, and maybe your initmpfs patches make it even more so. But
I've come to realize it's just a fancy toy, and yes, a trap : people are
blinded by the shinies and diverted from simpler solutions.
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