Mark Post wrote:
You need to chroot to /mnt/sysimage before running the mkinitrd.



Sorry to hop on route.. but..

I was wondering...

Why on earth does one need to mkinitrd/zipl after adding a DASD volume
to z/Linux ?

Most (if not all) 'distributed' platforms are perfectly happy to add a
volume to the configuration without having to rebuild the initial
ramdisk and re-writing the boot record. I can open my workstation, add a
SATA disk, fdisk it, format it, change /etc/fstab - and done.. no need
for any additional trickeries..

In a similar fashion, on other IBM z operating systems, adding a volume
doesn't require any form of 'rebuild' (not in their modern day versions
anyway).. I can add a z/VM or z/OS volume without having to rebuild the
nucleus or updating the IPL record. (z/VM requires me to add some info
in SYSTEM CONFIG - but that's far fetched from having to rebuild
anything.. I don't even need to re-run SAPL).

So it's not something to do with Linux.. It's not something to do with
the architecture.. so *WHY* does it have to be this way for Linux on z ?

For all I know, all the dasd_xxx modules have automagic probe capabilities.

And the initrd was never designed for anything else (from what I
understand) to just help out in bootstrapping the operating system
initialization process (by loading those essential modules) so that you
could start a system with a modular architecture (vs monolithic) to at
least mount the essential filesystems : basically the root fs.. and then
perform *real* initialization)..

Other operating systems use that scheme.. AIX does.. but I never had to
do a 'bosboot' because I added an FCP LUN, SAS drive or whatnot..I only
had to do that if I change the boot device.. but that's different.

Note :

I'm not blaming anyone (I don't play the blame game).. Not the linux
folks (Because if I want it differently *then* I can do it myself and
submit a patch to LKML), nor the Novell people (if this is specific to
SLES - and someone decided for whatever reason this is how it ought to
be - OR - maybe they're already looking into it) - and especially not
Mark (who is probably the most helpful person I've seen here).

Honestly just wondering.. Because I looked.. and can't find any good
reason !

--Ivan

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