Branko Badrljica wrote:
Jason wrote:
initrd is exactly how you do it. In the case of booting off of USB,
there are too many variables (drive detection order, different
hardware, etc) to handle on the kernel command line. An initrd gives
you the flexibility to solve these problems.
You could use initrd/initramfs, but seems like a lot of complications
for little gain...
I wouldn't call a portable, writable, boot from anywhere Linux OS on a
thumbdrive a trivial gain. ;-)
But y<ou have the headache of interface at the old and new root across
the pivot root. What happens if you execute something that was
dynamically linked from intramfs and it decides to load and link another
module with dlopen() from new root ? If you have that module and it
belongs to the same version, then probably everything is fine. Otherwise
it might not be.
1.) a good initrd will use only statically linked executables.
2.) you shouldn't start any servers or background processes from initrd.
3.) initrd's are tied to kernels. Every distro's initrd generator is
re-run upon upgrading the kernel. The modules versions won't be out of
sync then. Gentoo has genkernel for this purpose.
Also, opened files and extra nodes in /dev during intiramfs phase tend
to cause a headache or two...
If your initrd follows the 3 suggestions, above, there won't be any
processes running to hold a file or device open. Unless you had
something else in mind?
Jason.
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