On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 11:07 AM, Zac Medico <zmed...@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On 09/15/2011 07:33 AM, Joost Roeleveld wrote: > > The use for an initrd/initramfs/... will create an additional layer of > > complexity a lot of us users are not really waiting for, especially as we > are > > not seeing any issues with our current systems. > > Like it or not, it's the simplest possible solution if you want separate > /usr. The plan is to provide a minimal initramfs that won't contain any > modules, so it won't have to be rebuilt for each kernel. See the "/usr > vs. initramfs redux" thread: > > It should be noted that the alternative is to use a more full-featured initramfs like dracut, which will also be updated to support mounting /usr (it already parses /etc/fstab to remount root anyway). The minimal initramfs will not contain mdadm or lvm tools, so it is basically suitable for booting systems that don't currently require an initramfs. Of course, something like dracut is more likely to require you to rebuild the initramfs every time you update your kernel, and won't simply be a static image like the simplified one. The simplified initramfs could be compiled into the kernel as Zac suggests (this is probably the most foolproof method), or it could be loaded from /boot using the appropriate grub settings. Note that dracut does drop you to a shell if it fails (this is configurable), but by default this shell is dash, not bash. No doubt it would work fine either way, but bash is likely to be a little slower. I don't think RAM use is likely to be a problem - it should be completely de-allocated before init runs.
