Package: debianutils Version: 2.8.4 I recently discovered an apparent issue regarding the manner in which the "/usr/bin/mkboot" script from this package attempts to determine the root device. Here are lines 19-20 of the script:
# root partition which rdev >/dev/null && rootpart=$(rdev | cut -d ' ' -f 1) The problem is that rdev is only built for "intel" (ia32/x86) platforms. A quick peek at the current "util-linux-2.12p-4" package from the stable tree appears to confirm this. I became aware of this as a result of a discussion I had with a Gentoo (AMD64) user who was, at the time, using debianutils-1.16.7. As of the 2.x branch of debianutils, I see that a `which` check has been added which presumably prevents the script from crashing out on platforms where the rdev binary is not available at least. However, I would like to propose an alternate method which seems to me to be "platform-agnostic" and reliable: # root partition rootpart=$(grep -o "root=[^ ]*" /proc/cmdline | cut -d= -f2) The only issue I can see with this is that it depends on a functional proc mount - which seems reasonable. One could elaborate upon this slightly in order to perform a simple check to ensure that /proc is actually mounted correctly. In any case, it seems to be a reliable method of determinining the correct root device and I would therefore like for it to be considered for inclusion. For your reference, here is the original bug that I filed in Gentoo's bugzilla (note that I was advised to bring this upstream): https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=92748
