On 07/19/12 03:05, Rich Freeman wrote: > On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 2:53 PM, Michael Mol <[email protected]> wrote: >> AFAIK, neither genkernel nor dracut were expected to get tied to the >> Gentoo update process. Has that changed? > We don't even update kernels as part of the regular update process, > let alone initramfs systems. > > In general you update them together. > > The only issue I could see is if problems arise if you have a > different version of udev in your initramfs than on your system. I > don't know if that actually causes problems. For the most part after > the system is booted the initramfs is done its job. > > If some package did need a kernel/initramfs/etc to be updated it > should be the subject of news or an ewarn unless it becomes routine > practice. I don't think we want the system to start touching these > things without operator intervention unless we make it really > bulletproof like they do on big distros (the only reason they can is > they have one-size-fits-all kernels and initramfs designs). > > And here's an epic failure mode waiting to happen - what if the kernel is not stored in /boot ?
I can think of at least two common setups where that happens. One is virtual machines (Xen for example usually stores the kernel outside the guest filesystem), the other is systems with full-disk encryption where you don't have a bootloader on the local disk. Ah, who would have guessed that there are linux installs that are not single-disk desktops!
