Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 10:58:18PM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: Sorry for necro-posting, but I wanted to “add my mustard”, as we say over here. Why on earth is udev launching daemons in EARLY BOOT? Your guess is as good as mine! […] Perhaps the ability to hear the computer go bing when volumes mount is a killer marketing feature Reminds me of Sigourney Weaver's character in Galaxy Quest - she was the bimbo who announced to the room whenever the computer went bing Her character was the personification of GNU (from memory): “I only have one job on this damn ship. It is stupid, but I do it.“ And she does it well. :-) -- Gruß | Greetings | Qapla' Please do not share anything from, with or about me with any Facebook service. Give me your passport, and I tell you who you are.
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 04:43:16 -0400 Allan Gottlieb gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: I forgot one of the commands alan wanted to see. Here it is. allan I really did want to look at this thoroughly for you, but I've been flat on my back with some illness or other for a few days. Do you still need my eyeballs on this problem? ajglap gottlieb # fdisk -l Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x4f809fec Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 63 80324 40131 de Dell Utility /dev/sda2 * 819203080191915367 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda330801920 11466751941932800 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda4 114667520 976768064 431050272+ 5 Extended /dev/sda5 114667583 125162414 5247416 83 Linux /dev/sda6 125162478 146143304 10490413+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda7 146143368 355871879 104864256 8e Linux LVM /dev/sda8 355873928 46073152752428800 83 Linux Disk /dev/mapper/vg-usr: 21.5 GB, 21474836480 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2610 cylinders, total 41943040 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk /dev/mapper/vg-usr doesn't contain a valid partition table Disk /dev/mapper/vg-local: 10.7 GB, 10737418240 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1305 cylinders, total 20971520 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk /dev/mapper/vg-local doesn't contain a valid partition table Disk /dev/mapper/vg-var: 16.1 GB, 16106127360 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1958 cylinders, total 31457280 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk /dev/mapper/vg-var doesn't contain a valid partition table Disk /dev/mapper/vg-tmp: 5368 MB, 5368709120 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 652 cylinders, total 10485760 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk /dev/mapper/vg-tmp doesn't contain a valid partition table Disk /dev/mapper/vg-opt: 5368 MB, 5368709120 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 652 cylinders, total 10485760 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk /dev/mapper/vg-opt doesn't contain a valid partition table Disk /dev/mapper/vg-a: 37.6 GB, 37580963840 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4568 cylinders, total 73400320 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk /dev/mapper/vg-a doesn't contain a valid partition table -- Alan McKinnnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Tue, Apr 03 2012, Alan McKinnon wrote: On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 04:43:16 -0400 Allan Gottlieb gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: I forgot one of the commands alan wanted to see. Here it is. allan I really did want to look at this thoroughly for you, but I've been flat on my back with some illness or other for a few days. Do you still need my eyeballs on this problem? First and most important. Get well soon. I am fairly confident that it is a safe policy either with new partitions or new pv added to my vg and then pvmove. So you should save your efforts to more important tasks, first on that list is getting better. Sincerely, allan gottlieb
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 07:26:43 +0800, wdk@moriah wrote about Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought: On 29/03/2012, at 20:01, David W Noon dwn...@ntlworld.com wrote: [snip] At present, the first thing I see when udev starts is a failed attempt to run /usr/sbin/alsactl to restore the audio levels on my sound card. This occurs before localmount or any other services in the sysinit run-level have been started. [snip] that error was what clued me up to genkernels initramfs failing to mount /usr - the mount failure wasnt on screen long enough to see ... error reporting for the initramfs method needs fixing so users can faultfind problems more easily. flashing something on screen for a second and immediately pushing it offscreen doesnt count when there is lo logging to dmesg etc. The machine in question is not currently running an initramfs. This one reason why the udev developers believe that having /usr physically separate from / is broken. No error messages from udev or any of its scripts are logged. Perhaps dmesg logging is broken too. par for the course - run an initramfs (complexity) means more WILL go wrong so ways to fix it for normal users need to be in place.. Yes, it is a chore, debugging an initramfs. -- Regards, Dave [RLU #314465] == dwn...@ntlworld.com (David W Noon) == signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:20:04 +0100 David W Noon dwn...@ntlworld.com wrote: On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:26:40 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote about Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought: On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 23:01:24 +0100 David W Noon dwn...@ntlworld.com wrote: [snip] With the pending changes to udev scripts, you could well need /var -- and anything else -- before udev starts. So it is in the same category as /usr. Maybe, maybe not. However, no-one apart from you is even suggesting such a thing. For my part I'm going to ignore that possibility and concentrate on those things that are being seriously suggested. The Gentoo developers have been discussing just that. The reason is that many of the daemons that can be started by udev scripts require work files on /var, so we could well need /var mounted too. Which begs the obvious question, Why on earth is udev launching daemons in EARLY BOOT? -- Alan McKinnnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
I forgot one of the commands alan wanted to see. Here it is. allan ajglap gottlieb # fdisk -l Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x4f809fec Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 63 80324 40131 de Dell Utility /dev/sda2 * 819203080191915367 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda330801920 114667519419328007 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda4 114667520 976768064 431050272+ 5 Extended /dev/sda5 114667583 125162414 5247416 83 Linux /dev/sda6 125162478 14614330410490413+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda7 146143368 355871879 104864256 8e Linux LVM /dev/sda8 355873928 46073152752428800 83 Linux Disk /dev/mapper/vg-usr: 21.5 GB, 21474836480 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2610 cylinders, total 41943040 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk /dev/mapper/vg-usr doesn't contain a valid partition table Disk /dev/mapper/vg-local: 10.7 GB, 10737418240 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1305 cylinders, total 20971520 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk /dev/mapper/vg-local doesn't contain a valid partition table Disk /dev/mapper/vg-var: 16.1 GB, 16106127360 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1958 cylinders, total 31457280 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk /dev/mapper/vg-var doesn't contain a valid partition table Disk /dev/mapper/vg-tmp: 5368 MB, 5368709120 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 652 cylinders, total 10485760 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk /dev/mapper/vg-tmp doesn't contain a valid partition table Disk /dev/mapper/vg-opt: 5368 MB, 5368709120 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 652 cylinders, total 10485760 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk /dev/mapper/vg-opt doesn't contain a valid partition table Disk /dev/mapper/vg-a: 37.6 GB, 37580963840 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4568 cylinders, total 73400320 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk /dev/mapper/vg-a doesn't contain a valid partition table
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 22:21:11 -0400, Michael Mol wrote: There is so much BS being spewed around this topic, I'm genuinely disgusted. It's enough to lead me to suspect that Linux, as a platform, is *dying*. It's not dying, it's evolving - with the associated growing pains. Of course, that's not to say it couldn't evolve the way of the dodo. The true UNIX way is about KISS philosophy. Keep it Simple, Stupid. Keep things small, well-defined and modular. Break things into components, keep the components small and relatively well-defined. That, IMO, is the problem with the current filesystem layout. The split between / and /usr is anything but well-defined. Putting things in different boxes based on their function is good practice. Doing it based on some arbitrary size limit on the box is not. It makes me think of Ubuntu's insistence on fitting their installer on a single CD, even if it means omitting useful software or having the installer sneakily download components in the background. -- Neil Bothwick Bugs are Sons of Glitches signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 10:28:36 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote about Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought: On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:20:04 +0100 David W Noon dwn...@ntlworld.com wrote: [snip] The Gentoo developers have been discussing just that. The reason is that many of the daemons that can be started by udev scripts require work files on /var, so we could well need /var mounted too. Which begs the obvious question, Why on earth is udev launching daemons in EARLY BOOT? Your guess is as good as mine! At present, the first thing I see when udev starts is a failed attempt to run /usr/sbin/alsactl to restore the audio levels on my sound card. This occurs before localmount or any other services in the sysinit run-level have been started. Just why anybody wants sound before the disk volumes have been mounted baffles me; I guess people are just desperate for the comforts of stereo. Perhaps my mind simply lacks the sophistication to understand the design of udev. I guess I'll just stick to my 80-column Hollerith cards. ... :-) -- Regards, Dave [RLU #314465] == dwn...@ntlworld.com (David W Noon) == signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Wed, March 28, 2012 12:49 am, Mark Knecht wrote: snipped Do nothing. Just read, watch, learn but most important don't do updates. Just wait. Patience is a virtue! I wonder how many threads we'll get with I haven't updated my Gentoo for over a year, how do I best do the upgrade? from people following this advice? -- Joost
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 19:20, David W Noon dwn...@ntlworld.com wrote: On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:26:40 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote about Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought: On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 23:01:24 +0100 David W Noon dwn...@ntlworld.com wrote: [snip] With the pending changes to udev scripts, you could well need /var -- and anything else -- before udev starts. So it is in the same category as /usr. Maybe, maybe not. However, no-one apart from you is even suggesting such a thing. For my part I'm going to ignore that possibility and concentrate on those things that are being seriously suggested. The Gentoo developers have been discussing just that. The reason is that many of the daemons that can be started by udev scripts require work files on /var, so we could well need /var mounted too. But wait, that's what having /var/run being a link to /run was all about. This problem is supposed to be *solved* already, damnit -- Douglas J Hunley (doug.hun...@gmail.com) Twitter: @hunleyd Web: douglasjhunley.com G+: http://goo.gl/sajR3
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 5:02 AM, Neil Bothwick n...@digimed.co.uk wrote: On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 22:21:11 -0400, Michael Mol wrote: There is so much BS being spewed around this topic, I'm genuinely disgusted. It's enough to lead me to suspect that Linux, as a platform, is *dying*. It's not dying, it's evolving - with the associated growing pains. Of course, that's not to say it couldn't evolve the way of the dodo. The problem is the lack of engineering sense. The true UNIX way is about KISS philosophy. Keep it Simple, Stupid. Keep things small, well-defined and modular. Break things into components, keep the components small and relatively well-defined. That, IMO, is the problem with the current filesystem layout. The split between / and /usr is anything but well-defined. Putting things in different boxes based on their function is good practice. Doing it based on some arbitrary size limit on the box is not. Except that's not what people are doing. According to what I've read, that was the original rationale a couple decades ago, but that hasn't been the driving case for it for a long time, and pointing to it in a modern context is silly. These days, you put things on different mount points because you want different underlying characteristics either in the filesystem or its underlying block device. The gripe about the filesystem layout strikes me as a it works, but it isn't clean or elegant complaint. That means changing it is change for change's sake. And we're going to experience these growing pains tenfold as the consequences of that play out. If I was comfortable with *any* other platform as much as I've been with Gentoo these past couple years, I'd be jumping ship immediately. It makes me think of Ubuntu's insistence on fitting their installer on a single CD, even if it means omitting useful software or having the installer sneakily download components in the background. -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 10:21:15 -0400, Michael Mol wrote: That, IMO, is the problem with the current filesystem layout. The split between / and /usr is anything but well-defined. Putting things in different boxes based on their function is good practice. Doing it based on some arbitrary size limit on the box is not. Except that's not what people are doing. According to what I've read, that was the original rationale a couple decades ago, but that hasn't been the driving case for it for a long time, and pointing to it in a modern context is silly. No, that's not the reason for doing it now. The reason for doing it now has been applied to the previous solution (generally a bad idea) and is aimed at making / a self-contained bootable system, which is a movable target as hardware evolves. These days, you put things on different mount points because you want different underlying characteristics either in the filesystem or its underlying block device. And for the vast majority of use cases, separating /bin and /usr/bin does not make much sense. The gripe about the filesystem layout strikes me as a it works, but it isn't clean or elegant complaint. That means changing it is change for change's sake. And we're going to experience these growing pains tenfold as the consequences of that play out. It's never been clean or elegant, but it was tolerated and worked around. Now those that are trying to work around it have said they are no longer going to do so, which is their choice. If the separate /usr had been allowed to die when 20MB hard disks were around, this whole situation would never have arisen. The trouble with shit hitting the fan is that the longer you wait the more there is to spread around :( -- Neil Bothwick Oxymoron: Clearly Misunderstood. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 10:43 AM, Neil Bothwick n...@digimed.co.uk wrote: On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 10:21:15 -0400, Michael Mol wrote: That, IMO, is the problem with the current filesystem layout. The split between / and /usr is anything but well-defined. Putting things in different boxes based on their function is good practice. Doing it based on some arbitrary size limit on the box is not. Except that's not what people are doing. According to what I've read, that was the original rationale a couple decades ago, but that hasn't been the driving case for it for a long time, and pointing to it in a modern context is silly. No, that's not the reason for doing it now. For the sake of sane conversation, then, don't use phrases like Putting things in different boxes based on their function is good practice. Doing it based on some arbitrary size limit on the box is not. unless it has present context. Referencing an environmental constraint from twenty years ago in current-context discussion about system engineering only clouds the issue. This is part of the problem around this whole conversation dating back to *last summer*; things are referenced outside of their useful context, are presumed to be part of the current context, and get mixed in. It all becomes a confusing mess. The reason for doing it now has been applied to the previous solution (generally a bad idea) and is aimed at making / a self-contained bootable system, which is a movable target as hardware evolves. I don't think I've seen this adequately described or explained, honestly. How is the target moving? If someone wants to put / on a filesystem that the kernel doesn't have automagic support for, I can see that. Otherwise...not really. These days, you put things on different mount points because you want different underlying characteristics either in the filesystem or its underlying block device. And for the vast majority of use cases, separating /bin and /usr/bin does not make much sense. For the vast majority of use cases, having more than one display or keyboard doesn't make sense, either. For the vast majority of use cases, one shouldn't need more than one desktop environment installed. For the vast majority of use cases, one shouldn't need more than one optical drive, or more than one USB stick, or more than one authentication backend. That doesn't mean those use cases should be discarded. It means the system should be designed to be flexible. It makes about exactly as much sense for /bin and /usr/bin to be separate directories as it makes sense to mirror the bulk of an OS into a cpio blob that will be loaded into RAM. The initramfs likely won't even fit into some production systems' RAM. I know a talented professional sysadmin/IT guy who has most of his production VMs running some variant of RHEL or CentOS, with only 64M of RAM apiece. Because that makes *sense* when physical RAM may be cheap, but your virtualization vendor bilks you for the difference. So, OK. System bloats again, we can deal. We've been dealing with increasing RAM, disk and CPU requirements for decades. We've even stopped deriding Microsoft for having a bloated platform, given that we can't fend off the bloat ourselves. We eat some crow and move on. Apple and Android's lightweight-by-comparison 'our way or the highway' platform mentalities gain traction and outperform us. So where do we go from here? We have an initramfs which is painfully difficult to keep up to date by hand, as more and more uber-cool things will evolve dependencies on being present early-on. We'll *need* an automated means of keeping the initramfs up-to-date, because not everything supports static linking, and hand-walking the dynamic linking chain is crazy talk. Which means automated tools. These automated tools are going to have to deal with at least as bad an issue of moving targets as keeping / bootable was; they're a full layer of abstraction away from the main system than / was. The gripe about the filesystem layout strikes me as a it works, but it isn't clean or elegant complaint. That means changing it is change for change's sake. And we're going to experience these growing pains tenfold as the consequences of that play out. It's never been clean or elegant, but it was tolerated and worked around. Now those that are trying to work around it have said they are no longer going to do so, which is their choice. I love how this is described as hey, the decision has been made. It's here to stay. I love how the people described as They are treated as infallible, and the decisions perfect and final. There have been dozens of intelligent suggestions coming from intelligent and well-meaning people, including people making arguments in good faith. They were told they have to either bend over or code. And when they started coding, they got mocked. It's really only going to be upstream's choice until someone takes the choice away from them, either from users
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 10:08:40 -0400, Doug Hunley wrote about Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought: On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 19:20, David W Noon dwn...@ntlworld.com wrote: [snip] The Gentoo developers have been discussing just that. The reason is that many of the daemons that can be started by udev scripts require work files on /var, so we could well need /var mounted too. But wait, that's what having /var/run being a link to /run was all about. This problem is supposed to be *solved* already, damnit That's okay for PID files, but udev scripts are supposed to be allowed to run *anything*. -- Regards, Dave [RLU #314465] *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* dwn...@ntlworld.com (David W Noon) *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On 2012-03-29 01:20, Neil Bothwick wrote: I'm in favour of /bin and /lib, and I see the pros and cons of /sbin and am not too bothered about how that is done. But having two (or more) of each of these is an artificial mess that is a solution to a problem that As I said, it's a matter of taste. Red Hat employ devs working on many aspects of Linux, and we should be grateful for this (or do you prefer the Ubuntu approach of taking with little giving back?). One of the reasons Greg K-H left SUSE to work for I did say that my writing was speculative? And I never claimed Greg K-H is/was working for Redhat. Anyway, for the record I have always had a great respect and admiration for both Redhat and Greg K-H (which I see as a very good and knowledgeable kernel hacker) but this latest debacle has taken it down a few notches... On the other hand I would prefer Ubuntus approach to someone (anyone) pushing bad designs any day (speaking hypothetically and generally without pointing out anyone or any company). But this is quite pointless (my whining) since, as someone else mentioned, code talks Perhaps some day I can find the time to hack my own solution (which of course will be perfection ;-) ). :-) Best regards Peter K
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
J. Roeleveld wrote: On Wed, March 28, 2012 12:49 am, Mark Knecht wrote: snipped Do nothing. Just read, watch, learn but most important don't do updates. Just wait. Patience is a virtue! I wonder how many threads we'll get with I haven't updated my Gentoo for over a year, how do I best do the upgrade? from people following this advice? -- Joost I was thinking about that. My system works right now. I could just not update for a good long while before doing any updates. Maybe the udev dev will do like the hal guy, admit he screwed up and fix it so that it runs as it should and leave it like it used to be. Also, it is getting warm here. I don't need the extra heat from compiling anyway. ;-) Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words! Miss the compile output? Hint: EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS=--quiet-build=n
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 19:14:31 +0200, pk wrote: But this is quite pointless (my whining) since, as someone else mentioned, code talks Perhaps some day I can find the time to hack my own solution (which of course will be perfection ;-) ). I wait with bated breath. Even if less than perfect, it will be better than mine :) -- Neil Bothwick Found my .sig, it was in behind the cushion on the settee. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On 2012-03-29 20:06, Neil Bothwick wrote: I wait with bated breath. Even if less than perfect, it will be better than mine :) I'll be sure to let you know if I find perfection... Perhaps an AI system that takes care of it self and serves me drinks (with or without an umbrella) while I lay on my couch doing whatever I see fit (since the bots controlled by the AI have taken over the boring chores I have all this free time)? On the other hand such a solution would most likely malfunction and hit me on the head with the shaker, pour it's contents all over me and chase me around with something sharp... ;-) Best regards Peter K
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 13:01:49 +0100 David W Noon dwn...@ntlworld.com wrote: On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 10:28:36 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote about Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought: On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:20:04 +0100 David W Noon dwn...@ntlworld.com wrote: [snip] The Gentoo developers have been discussing just that. The reason is that many of the daemons that can be started by udev scripts require work files on /var, so we could well need /var mounted too. Which begs the obvious question, Why on earth is udev launching daemons in EARLY BOOT? Your guess is as good as mine! At present, the first thing I see when udev starts is a failed attempt to run /usr/sbin/alsactl to restore the audio levels on my sound card. This occurs before localmount or any other services in the sysinit run-level have been started. Just why anybody wants sound before the disk volumes have been mounted baffles me; I guess people are just desperate for the comforts of stereo. Perhaps the ability to hear the computer go bing when volumes mount is a killer marketing feature Reminds me of Sigourney Weaver's character in Galaxy Quest - she was the bimbo who announced to the room whenever the computer went bing Perhaps my mind simply lacks the sophistication to understand the design of udev. I guess I'll just stick to my 80-column Hollerith cards. ... :-) -- Alan McKinnnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On 2012-03-29 22:58, Alan McKinnon wrote: Reminds me of Sigourney Weaver's character in Galaxy Quest - she was the bimbo who announced to the room whenever the computer went bing :-D An underrated movie which contains a lot of geek and Star Trek/SciFi in general parody... Thumbs up! :-D Best regards Peter K
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On 29/03/2012, at 20:01, David W Noon dwn...@ntlworld.com wrote: On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 10:28:36 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote about Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought: On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:20:04 +0100 David W Noon dwn...@ntlworld.com wrote: [snip] The Gentoo developers have been discussing just that. The reason is that many of the daemons that can be started by udev scripts require work files on /var, so we could well need /var mounted too. Which begs the obvious question, Why on earth is udev launching daemons in EARLY BOOT? Your guess is as good as mine! At present, the first thing I see when udev starts is a failed attempt to run /usr/sbin/alsactl to restore the audio levels on my sound card. This occurs before localmount or any other services in the sysinit run-level have been started. Just why anybody wants sound before the disk volumes have been mounted baffles me; I guess people are just desperate for the comforts of stereo. Perhaps my mind simply lacks the sophistication to understand the design of udev. I guess I'll just stick to my 80-column Hollerith cards. ... :-) -- Regards, Dave [RLU #314465] == dwn...@ntlworld.com (David W Noon) == that error was what clued me up to genkernels initramfs failing to mount /usr - the mount failure wasnt on screen long enough to see ... error reporting for the initramfs method needs fixing so users can faultfind problems more easily. flashing something on screen for a second and immediately pushing it offscreen doesnt count when there is lo logging to dmesg etc. par for the course - run an initramfs (complexity) means more WILL go wrong so ways to fix it for normal users need to be in place.. BillK
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 18:47:06 -0500, Dale wrote: Why not post the details of it? All an initramfs is is an init script and a few binaries. Extract the init script, the initramfs file is a plain cpio archive, and post it here. I did post it a week or so ago in another thread. The init script? I didn't see it, which thread? Yea, I know all that. They are breaking one thing to fix something else so that they don't have to deal with fixing what they broke. I got that a long time ago. ;-) I'm coming round to the point of view that the breakage predates udev by many years. The whole idea of having four directories for binaries and two for libraries is an inelegance that I have come to accept over the years but only because it is the way we have always done it -- Neil Bothwick A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail? signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 1:51 AM, Neil Bothwick n...@digimed.co.uk wrote: On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 18:47:06 -0500, Dale wrote: Why not post the details of it? All an initramfs is is an init script and a few binaries. Extract the init script, the initramfs file is a plain cpio archive, and post it here. I did post it a week or so ago in another thread. The init script? I didn't see it, which thread? Yea, I know all that. They are breaking one thing to fix something else so that they don't have to deal with fixing what they broke. I got that a long time ago. ;-) I'm coming round to the point of view that the breakage predates udev by many years. The whole idea of having four directories for binaries and two for libraries is an inelegance that I have come to accept over the years but only because it is the way we have always done it http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074114.html Regards. -- Canek Peláez Valdés Posgrado en Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 18:50:04 -0500, Dale wrote: So throw out my plans and just do it their way? In that case, I may as well use Fedora since it sort of started there. Maybe that is what they wanted and planned. According to Greg K-H, who I tend to trust, this did not come from Red Hat. It's just that a couple of the devs are employed by them. Others are not. -- Neil Bothwick ...Advert for restaurant: Exotic foods for all occasions. Police balls a speciality. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Tue, Mar 27 2012, Alan McKinnon wrote: All you need is a decent amount of free disk space as you will shuffle things around just like in that 15 pieces game. This sounds encouraging. My disk is less than half full so space is not an issue. Assuming / is the first (or second) partition on a disk: Question. For me, / is actually /dev/sda5 (sda4 is the extended partition, the three in front are one dell's special, and two for windows, the latter only used when contacting dell for diagnostics). But I think this difference is not material. Measure how much data is on the file system. Measure how much data is on the /usr file system. Right Move partitions after / on the disk out of the way creating enough free space to contain current / and /usr. Question. /dev/sda7 is LVM and that is used for /usr, /local, et al. How do I move an LVM partition? I could make plain partitions and just copy /usr, /opt, et al., each to a separate partition. Is that the way? Enlarge / partition, enlarge the file system on it, copy contents of /usr there. / is ext3, which I believe can be extended live. Or do you recommend using a gentoo install CD (or equivalent)? Arrange the rest of your disk the way you want it (either with or without LVM, both are easy enough to do). Move the rest of your data back to it's final destination. Delete any last remnants of the old /usr partition. This part seems straight forward and not scary since I still would have the newly created and copied /usr, /opt, et al. partitions in case something goes wrong. So the result would be / (including /usr) on one partition (not LVM) /local, /opt et al., each as separate LVs on my recreated LVM partition I believe this is one of the configurations others have adopted, which I consider a plus. The other favored configuration is to keep the current partition scheme and use an initramfs via genkernel, dracut, or Neil's in kernel config soln. I would suspect there are second order improvements such as moving /usr/portage and /usr/src to LVM with symlinks left behind in /usr, but I am now just concerned to see if I have the basic plan correct. Have I? thanks, allan
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
Allan Gottlieb writes: On Tue, Mar 27 2012, Alan McKinnon wrote: Move partitions after / on the disk out of the way creating enough free space to contain current / and /usr. Question. /dev/sda7 is LVM and that is used for /usr, /local, et al. How do I move an LVM partition? I could make plain partitions and just copy /usr, /opt, et al., each to a separate partition. Is that the way? So you have free space after /dev/sda7? Just create some more partitions, use pvcreate to make them physical volumes, then vgextend to add them to your LVM. Then use pvmirror to move stuff over. Assuming you create two more partitions /dev/sda8 and /dev/sda9: pvcreate /dev/sda[89] vgextend myvg /dev/sda[89] pvmove /dev/sda7 vgreduce myvg /dev/sda7 When I use LVM, I always use many small partitions for it, instead of one large one. This gives more flexibility in case on needs to enlarge a standard partition, or to add such a partition in case something else has to be installed alongside Gentoo. pvmove then allows to free a partition. Enlarge / partition, enlarge the file system on it, copy contents of /usr there. / is ext3, which I believe can be extended live. Or do you recommend using a gentoo install CD (or equivalent)? ext3 can be enlargend while in use, but your partition can not. You can enlarge the root partition after the contents of /dev/sda7 have been moved, using [c]fdisk or whatever tool you like, but you need to reboot for the kernel to see the new size. That would be no problem with root on LVM, but then you also need an initramfs :) BTW, I just had this problem when installing Ubuntu desktop on a big server. For the first time in my life, I simply let the installer decide about partitioning. What could possibly go wrong, it's a 73G drive, a single root partition would do, user data is mounted via NFS. But that night at home I got an email that the root FS was full after installing some packages. The installer created a 5G partition only, and 68G of swap, probably because the machine has 64G of RAM. The Ubuntu installer does not know of LVM, so I had to manually reboot the machine the next day. Arrange the rest of your disk the way you want it (either with or without LVM, both are easy enough to do). Move the rest of your data back to it's final destination. Delete any last remnants of the old /usr partition. This part seems straight forward and not scary since I still would have the newly created and copied /usr, /opt, et al. partitions in case something goes wrong. pvmove seems to be considered safe. Just reboot after enlarging the root partition, then use resize2fs /dev/sda5 to make the FS larger. Then copy /usr over: mount -o bind / /mnt mount -o remount,ro /usr cp -a /usr/* /mnt/ The bind moun t makes the root FS appear in a 2nd place, without /usr being populated by the content of your /usr partition. Don't forget to remove /usr from /etc/fstab. I believe this is one of the configurations others have adopted, which I consider a plus. The other favored configuration is to keep the current partition scheme and use an initramfs via genkernel, dracut, or Neil's in kernel config soln. That's how I do it, but that's mainly because my whole system is encrypted. BTW, this does not seem to be supported at this moment, at least not with genkernel, there is no option to mount an encrypted /usr. So I just created another LVM, unencrypted, and copied my /usr there. Encrypting /usr does not make too much sense anyway. I also have the problem now that I see an error while booting because /usr cannot be fscked, but I will care about this later. I would suspect there are second order improvements such as moving /usr/portage and /usr/src to LVM with symlinks left behind in /usr, but I am now just concerned to see if I have the basic plan correct. Have I? Sort of. I also have portage stuff on another partition (well, on two, the tree has its tiny extra partition), using /var/portage. I don't use symlinks, but changed the portage paths in /etc/make.conf, and re-created /etc/make.profile. Wonko
RE: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
From: Neil Bothwick [mailto:n...@digimed.co.uk] On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 18:50:04 -0500, Dale wrote: So throw out my plans and just do it their way? In that case, I may as well use Fedora since it sort of started there. Maybe that is what they wanted and planned. According to Greg K-H, who I tend to trust, this did not come from Red Hat. It's just that a couple of the devs are employed by them. Others are not. I was particularly interested to find out that Solaris started merging / and /usr 15 years ago, so in reality, the true UNIX way that Linux is following has long since been abandoned by UNIX :) --Mike
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
Then copy /usr over: mount -o bind / /mnt mount -o remount,ro /usr cp -a /usr/* /mnt/ The bind moun t makes the root FS appear in a 2nd place, without /usr being populated by the content of your /usr partition. Don't forget to remove /usr from /etc/fstab. I can recommend using rsync instead of cp. Main advantage is rsync can be stopped (ie. killed) mid-way and resumed later. No big deal, but if your /usr is as large as mine, you might like this! If transfering very large files, instead of restarting the large file from scratch, using the --append option will write the partial data in the destination file. If killed and resumed, rsync will find the dst file is smaller than it should and will continue from where it left. If the data is absolutely crictical important, you can also use the -c option to force rsync to do a checksum of the files to compare, it will recopy anything that's not right. I normally use a -c check if I used --append and had to kill it (because I'm paranoid AND patient). Although I have seen zero cases where the -c found errors. Note the slashes at end of directories mean something with rsync, in my example below, it means make usr and mnt identical, having rsync /usr /mnt/ means copy usr into /mnt/ (giving /mnt/usr/). So cp -a /usr/* /mnt/ becomes: rsync -ah --progress /usr/ /mnt/ Enjoy!
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 11:20:25 -0400 Allan Gottlieb gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: On Tue, Mar 27 2012, Alan McKinnon wrote: All you need is a decent amount of free disk space as you will shuffle things around just like in that 15 pieces game. This sounds encouraging. My disk is less than half full so space is not an issue. Assuming / is the first (or second) partition on a disk: Question. For me, / is actually /dev/sda5 (sda4 is the extended partition, the three in front are one dell's special, and two for windows, the latter only used when contacting dell for diagnostics). But I think this difference is not material. Measure how much data is on the file system. Measure how much data is on the /usr file system. Right Move partitions after / on the disk out of the way creating enough free space to contain current / and /usr. Question. /dev/sda7 is LVM and that is used for /usr, /local, et al. How do I move an LVM partition? I could make plain partitions and just copy /usr, /opt, et al., each to a separate partition. Is that the way? Enlarge / partition, enlarge the file system on it, copy contents of /usr there. / is ext3, which I believe can be extended live. Or do you recommend using a gentoo install CD (or equivalent)? Arrange the rest of your disk the way you want it (either with or without LVM, both are easy enough to do). Move the rest of your data back to it's final destination. Delete any last remnants of the old /usr partition. This part seems straight forward and not scary since I still would have the newly created and copied /usr, /opt, et al. partitions in case something goes wrong. So the result would be / (including /usr) on one partition (not LVM) /local, /opt et al., each as separate LVs on my recreated LVM partition I believe this is one of the configurations others have adopted, which I consider a plus. The other favored configuration is to keep the current partition scheme and use an initramfs via genkernel, dracut, or Neil's in kernel config soln. I would suspect there are second order improvements such as moving /usr/portage and /usr/src to LVM with symlinks left behind in /usr, but I am now just concerned to see if I have the basic plan correct. Have I? What you describe sounds ok, but I'd still hesitate to give a definite answer without a little more data. If you send over the output of df -h du -shx for each partition you have fdisk -l pvdisplay vgdisplay lvdisplay I'll be happy to go over the numbers and offer an opinion. -- Alan McKinnnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 08:51:23 +0100 Neil Bothwick n...@digimed.co.uk wrote: On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 18:47:06 -0500, Dale wrote: Why not post the details of it? All an initramfs is is an init script and a few binaries. Extract the init script, the initramfs file is a plain cpio archive, and post it here. I did post it a week or so ago in another thread. The init script? I didn't see it, which thread? Yea, I know all that. They are breaking one thing to fix something else so that they don't have to deal with fixing what they broke. I got that a long time ago. ;-) I'm coming round to the point of view that the breakage predates udev by many years. The whole idea of having four directories for binaries and two for libraries is an inelegance that I have come to accept over the years but only because it is the way we have always done it four and two? You're the lucky one. I have six and three minimally on every server, plus however many the proprietary fellows felt like sticking in /opt -- Alan McKinnnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 01:20:23 +0100 David W Noon dwn...@ntlworld.com wrote: On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 17:28:17 -0500, Dale wrote about Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought: Alan McKinnon wrote: [snip] Everything you fear about udev instantly ceases to exist and is no longer a problem. Sorted. And /var ?? What about /var? The thread is about initramfs and putting /usr onto the / volume to get around early-boot prolems. Surely you do not need the content of /var during early boot? -- Alan McKinnnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On 2012-03-28 20:29, Mike Edenfield wrote: I was particularly interested to find out that Solaris started merging / and /usr 15 years ago, so in reality, the true UNIX way that Linux is following has long since been abandoned by UNIX :) Yep, next up is transitioning to a more modern handling of device naming (starts with c:). I certainly hope they can persuade all the other UNIX vendors in this, one true way(tm)! And certainly the *BSD must be forced to follow suit... Come to think of it, why not scrap all operating systems except the one and only Lord of the OS? :-| The true UNIX way is that there is no true UNIX way... Solaris is no more UNIX than AIX or HP-UX or even BSD (which Solaris is based on). There's only a poor way of doing things and a good way of doing things (guess which way I think Linux is going). There's a lot of talk like so: I think this therefore it must be the best way. _Noone_ has rationalised _why_ this change has to happen except: Oh, my bluetooth keyboard doesn't work during boot, therefore everyone has to suffer or a modern desktop requires this (without explaining why a modern desktop requires could be considered hand waving - for the record, I consider my desktop quite modern with the exception of whistles and bells but I wouldn't want to force going without on anyone). All this talk about different directories is a matter of taste; there is no technical reason (shared libraries aside) that some tools should be in a directory (named after whatever); it's just a matter of organisation and I happen to be on the side which thinks the FHS rationalisation for /bin, /sbin, /lib is a neat one. Others thinks the neatest solution is to put everything into one directory (whatever that may be) and that's fine too, if there was a choice... As for what Neil Bothwick said: According to Greg K-H, who I tend to trust, this did not come from Red Hat. It's just that a couple of the devs are employed by them. Others are not. Redhat are in control (maintaining or main contributor) of a whole lot of core software: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Red_Hat_contributions#Upstream_Focus So maybe it's in their (Redhats) best interest to only support their way of doing things? Or it may be that the devs themselves are so tight that they are working in this direction on their own accord. Or maybe it's all coincidental... But the facts remain and that is that the Linux landscape are changing dramatically (for the worse from my point of view). This is only speculation of course but I see the software (systemd, udev, avahi, dbus, glib, gtk+, pulseaudio etc.) Redhat support/maintain interlinking with each other, creating ever growing dependencies (not very UNIXy in my opinion); I wouldn't be surprised if, in a few years, the (abomination) Gnome desktop system would be a hard dependency for running a Linux system... Or maybe Oracle (Solaris) is behind all this with their Gnome derived JDS? Oh, the gnomes are out to get me! ;-) A little bit more on topic perhaps: An initrd is a redundancy in my point of view; a hassle that is needed by binary distributions with modules for everything from the moon to the sun. It's yet another step that is needed to restore what once was without gaining _anything_ for it... (I don't use modules for devices that should be available during boot). Best regards Peter K
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 23:40:27 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote about Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought: On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 01:20:23 +0100 David W Noon dwn...@ntlworld.com wrote: On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 17:28:17 -0500, Dale wrote about Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought: Alan McKinnon wrote: [snip] Everything you fear about udev instantly ceases to exist and is no longer a problem. Sorted. And /var ?? What about /var? The thread is about initramfs and putting /usr onto the / volume to get around early-boot prolems. Surely you do not need the content of /var during early boot? With the pending changes to udev scripts, you could well need /var -- and anything else -- before udev starts. So it is in the same category as /usr. -- Regards, Dave [RLU #314465] *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* dwn...@ntlworld.com (David W Noon) *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 23:01:24 +0100 David W Noon dwn...@ntlworld.com wrote: On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 23:40:27 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote about Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought: On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 01:20:23 +0100 David W Noon dwn...@ntlworld.com wrote: On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 17:28:17 -0500, Dale wrote about Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought: Alan McKinnon wrote: [snip] Everything you fear about udev instantly ceases to exist and is no longer a problem. Sorted. And /var ?? What about /var? The thread is about initramfs and putting /usr onto the / volume to get around early-boot prolems. Surely you do not need the content of /var during early boot? With the pending changes to udev scripts, you could well need /var -- and anything else -- before udev starts. So it is in the same category as /usr. Maybe, maybe not. However, no-one apart from you is even suggesting such a thing. For my part I'm going to ignore that possibility and concentrate on those things that are being seriously suggested. -- Alan McKinnnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:26:40 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote about Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought: On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 23:01:24 +0100 David W Noon dwn...@ntlworld.com wrote: [snip] With the pending changes to udev scripts, you could well need /var -- and anything else -- before udev starts. So it is in the same category as /usr. Maybe, maybe not. However, no-one apart from you is even suggesting such a thing. For my part I'm going to ignore that possibility and concentrate on those things that are being seriously suggested. The Gentoo developers have been discussing just that. The reason is that many of the daemons that can be started by udev scripts require work files on /var, so we could well need /var mounted too. -- Regards, Dave [RLU #314465] *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* dwn...@ntlworld.com (David W Noon) *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 23:58:23 +0200, pk wrote: organisation and I happen to be on the side which thinks the FHS rationalisation for /bin, /sbin, /lib is a neat one. Others thinks the neatest solution is to put everything into one directory (whatever that may be) and that's fine too, if there was a choice... I'm in favour of /bin and /lib, and I see the pros and cons of /sbin and am not too bothered about how that is done. But having two (or more) of each of these is an artificial mess that is a solution to a problem that ceased to exist decades ago. As for what Neil Bothwick said: According to Greg K-H, who I tend to trust, this did not come from Red Hat. It's just that a couple of the devs are employed by them. Others are not. Redhat are in control (maintaining or main contributor) of a whole lot of core software: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Red_Hat_contributions#Upstream_Focus So maybe it's in their (Redhats) best interest to only support their way of doing things? Or it may be that the devs themselves are so tight that they are working in this direction on their own accord. Or maybe it's all coincidental... Red Hat employ devs working on many aspects of Linux, and we should be grateful for this (or do you prefer the Ubuntu approach of taking with little giving back?). One of the reasons Greg K-H left SUSE to work for the Linux Foundation was so that he could be completely distro-independent. AFAIK he has never worked for Red Hat. -- Neil Bothwick PCMCIA: People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 2:29 PM, Mike Edenfield kut...@kutulu.org wrote: From: Neil Bothwick [mailto:n...@digimed.co.uk] On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 18:50:04 -0500, Dale wrote: So throw out my plans and just do it their way? In that case, I may as well use Fedora since it sort of started there. Maybe that is what they wanted and planned. According to Greg K-H, who I tend to trust, this did not come from Red Hat. It's just that a couple of the devs are employed by them. Others are not. I was particularly interested to find out that Solaris started merging / and /usr 15 years ago, so in reality, the true UNIX way that Linux is following has long since been abandoned by UNIX :) There is so much BS being spewed around this topic, I'm genuinely disgusted. It's enough to lead me to suspect that Linux, as a platform, is *dying*. Given that Linux has been my primary platform for most of my life, that bothers me no small amount. The true UNIX way is about KISS philosophy. Keep it Simple, Stupid. Keep things small, well-defined and modular. Break things into components, keep the components small and relatively well-defined. A *system* can be complex, but as long as it's well-organized, sufficiently large pieces of it may be grokked independently of others. Some packages eschewed that philosophy. Rather than say fix your crap, the udev developers threw their hands in the air and said we don't care; it's the responsibility of the distro maintainer to make sure that thinks are in shape before we get launched. Except that the only kind of distro for which it'd work reliably would be distros which don't have a rolling release behavior; the maintaners can get everything organized for a release, and then set things in stone. Gentoo, Arch, Debian/testing and Mint/Debian are in for a bumpy ride, for as long as this crap lasts. Well, either that, or understanding initramfs, symbol versioning and dynamic linking is going to become a more important a skill than shell scripting. All aid tools will break at one time or another, and we'll be have to learn how to fix them, or give up operating configurations that our own experience have taught us were the best for our circumstances. -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
David W Noon wrote: On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:26:40 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote about Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought: On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 23:01:24 +0100 David W Noon dwn...@ntlworld.com wrote: [snip] With the pending changes to udev scripts, you could well need /var -- and anything else -- before udev starts. So it is in the same category as /usr. Maybe, maybe not. However, no-one apart from you is even suggesting such a thing. For my part I'm going to ignore that possibility and concentrate on those things that are being seriously suggested. The Gentoo developers have been discussing just that. The reason is that many of the daemons that can be started by udev scripts require work files on /var, so we could well need /var mounted too. Yep. I notice my LVM starts twice. It fails the first time because it can't find files in /var then tries again later on after everything is mounted, except the LVM stuff of course. So, this is most likely coming and is one reason I am considering different options. This is also another reason I want to get some sort of init thingy working. I already have /var on its own regular partition but also want /usr and /var on LVM. Right now, that could cause a problem since LVM looks to have issues coming up without /var being mounted. Luckily for me, I only have a data partition that contains video files on LVM. It has nothing to do with the OS itself. That is one reason this is causing me concerns. It's not just what is already getting screwed up but also what is about to get screwed up that makes it even worse. Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words! Miss the compile output? Hint: EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS=--quiet-build=n
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Wed, Mar 28 2012, Alan McKinnon wrote: What you describe sounds ok, but I'd still hesitate to give a definite answer without a little more data. If you send over the output of df -h du -shx for each partition you have fdisk -l pvdisplay vgdisplay lvdisplay I'll be happy to go over the numbers and offer an opinion. Wow. I get a detailed lvm recipe (with warnings) from wonko (thank you very much) and from alan I get an offer I can't refuse. Definitely a good day! allan ajglap gottlieb # df -h FilesystemSize Used Avail Use% Mounted on rootfs5.0G 534M 4.2G 12% / /dev/root 5.0G 534M 4.2G 12% / rc-svcdir 1.0M 92K 932K 9% /lib64/rc/init.d cgroup_root10M 0 10M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup udev 10M 660K 9.4M 7% /dev shm 3.9G 304K 3.9G 1% /dev/shm /dev/mapper/vg-usr 20G 14G 5.7G 70% /usr /dev/mapper/vg-local 9.9G 7.3G 2.1G 79% /local /dev/mapper/vg-var 15G 466M 14G 4% /var /dev/mapper/vg-tmp5.0G 307M 4.4G 7% /tmp /dev/mapper/vg-opt5.0G 285M 4.4G 6% /opt /dev/mapper/vg-a 35G 16G 18G 48% /a ajglap gottlieb # for i in / /usr /local /var /tmp /opt /a; do du -shx $i; done 395M/ 13G /usr 7.2G/local 313M/var 168M/tmp 147M/opt 16G /a ajglap gottlieb # pvdisplay --- Physical volume --- PV Name /dev/sda7 VG Name vg PV Size 100.01 GiB / not usable 2.50 MiB Allocatable yes PE Size 4.00 MiB Total PE 25601 Free PE 2561 Allocated PE 23040 PV UUID NW7PkL-9uTd-FpVs-CBQ5-23uN-zXmP-S93rUr ajglap gottlieb # vgdisplay --- Volume group --- VG Name vg System ID Formatlvm2 Metadata Areas1 Metadata Sequence No 9 VG Access read/write VG Status resizable MAX LV0 Cur LV6 Open LV 6 Max PV0 Cur PV1 Act PV1 VG Size 100.00 GiB PE Size 4.00 MiB Total PE 25601 Alloc PE / Size 23040 / 90.00 GiB Free PE / Size 2561 / 10.00 GiB VG UUID Qu7Lml-xaZ6-RjDF-3Pu4-Q0im-aStB-AWKGwD ajglap gottlieb # lvdisplay --- Logical volume --- LV Path/dev/vg/usr LV Nameusr VG Namevg LV UUIDPsU87T-o3vy-k2wj-15wU-tOZk-2csz-1gmDwz LV Write Accessread/write LV Creation host, time , LV Status available # open 1 LV Size20.00 GiB Current LE 5120 Segments 1 Allocation inherit Read ahead sectors auto - currently set to 256 Block device 254:0 --- Logical volume --- LV Path/dev/vg/local LV Namelocal VG Namevg LV UUIDh05KfH-xF4U-A5ii-diWd-SZ4P-bWQD-U8Gly2 LV Write Accessread/write LV Creation host, time , LV Status available # open 1 LV Size10.00 GiB Current LE 2560 Segments 1 Allocation inherit Read ahead sectors auto - currently set to 256 Block device 254:1 --- Logical volume --- LV Path/dev/vg/var LV Namevar VG Namevg LV UUID860txl-vddH-nF5m-2cZz-6uco-eZ4v-IvSeh6 LV Write Accessread/write LV Creation host, time , LV Status available # open 1 LV Size15.00 GiB Current LE 3840 Segments 2 Allocation inherit Read ahead sectors auto - currently set to 256 Block device 254:2 --- Logical volume --- LV Path/dev/vg/tmp LV Nametmp VG Namevg LV UUIDa2RKmz-If71-cF9p-QE3E-kjQO-sYW2-VopkEO LV Write Accessread/write LV Creation host, time , LV Status available # open 1 LV Size5.00 GiB Current LE 1280 Segments 1 Allocation inherit Read ahead sectors auto - currently set to 256 Block device 254:3 --- Logical volume --- LV Path/dev/vg/opt LV Nameopt VG Namevg LV UUID0zUFgs-I0UE-j3ue-eVtY-9snn-noho-uDNOBk LV Write Accessread/write LV Creation host, time , LV Status available # open 1 LV Size5.00 GiB Current LE 1280 Segments 1 Allocation inherit Read ahead sectors
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On 3/27/2012 6:36 AM, Helmut Jarausch wrote: Hi, I've been looking for simple method to create a simple initramfs to just mount the /usr partition. I've found http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Basic_initramfs_used_to_check_and_mount_/usr If this is all you need, I recommend you use dracut. The default installation (no use-flags or optional modules) will product an initramfs that loads whatever you current rootfs and /usr partitions are. I've been working on updating the wiki with more detailed instructions; for your case what's there now ought to be plenty: http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Dracut
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 9:19 AM, Mike Edenfield kut...@kutulu.org wrote: On 3/27/2012 6:36 AM, Helmut Jarausch wrote: Hi, I've been looking for simple method to create a simple initramfs to just mount the /usr partition. I've found http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Basic_initramfs_used_to_check_and_mount_/usr If this is all you need, I recommend you use dracut. The default installation (no use-flags or optional modules) will product an initramfs that loads whatever you current rootfs and /usr partitions are. I've been working on updating the wiki with more detailed instructions; for your case what's there now ought to be plenty: http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Dracut Dracut is masked on ~amd64. Bugs me, as I'd rather use something like that than genkernel (I very much like building my own kernels; it helps me keep things lean, and keeps me familiar with the capabilities of current and future systems). But now I have to find time to learn how to use Genkernel. If we're going to be shoved into tight space like this, I'd be nice if the you can just use $x tools work on stable. I've got three previously-working systems at home I can't risk rebooting right now because of this udev+/usr nonsense. I almost invariably put /usr and /home on top of LVM, RAID or both. -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 09:30:41 -0400, Michael Mol wrote: If we're going to be shoved into tight space like this, I'd be nice if the you can just use $x tools work on stable. I've got three previously-working systems at home I can't risk rebooting right now because of this udev+/usr nonsense. I almost invariably put /usr and /home on top of LVM, RAID or both. Only the testing udev needs an initramfs now, so it doesn't really matter yet. However, it would be nice if dracut were stabilised at least a week before udev-18* to give time to play with it. It certainly needs to be stabilised before the news announcement of udev-18* going stable. -- Neil Bothwick The horizon of many people is a circle with a radius of zero. They call this their point of view. -- Albert Einstein signature.asc Description: PGP signature
RE: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
If this is all you need, I recommend you use dracut. The default installation (no use-flags or optional modules) will product an initramfs that loads whatever you current rootfs and /usr partitions are. I've been working on updating the wiki with more detailed instructions; for your case what's there now ought to be plenty: http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Dracut Dracut is masked on ~amd64. Bugs me, as I'd rather use something like that than genkernel (I very much like building my own kernels; it helps me keep things lean, and keeps me familiar with the capabilities of current and future systems). But now I have to find time to learn how to use Genkernel. If we're going to be shoved into tight space like this, I'd be nice if the you can just use $x tools work on stable. I've got three previously-working systems at home I can't risk rebooting right now because of this udev+/usr nonsense. I almost invariably put /usr and /home on top of LVM, RAID or both. I'm pretty sure that a stable Dracut is a prerequisite for a stable udev-182+. Hopefully with more people taking interest in using an initramfs it will stabilize quickly. It's working for me on all of the systems I'm tried it, so I'm going to try switching a couple of servers at work over to using it. But none of them have anything particularly complex (no net boots, for example) so I don't know how much of a test case they'll be :) --Mike
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
Neil Bothwick n...@digimed.co.uk wrote: On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 09:30:41 -0400, Michael Mol wrote: If we're going to be shoved into tight space like this, I'd be nice if the you can just use $x tools work on stable. I've got three previously-working systems at home I can't risk rebooting right now because of this udev+/usr nonsense. I almost invariably put /usr and /home on top of LVM, RAID or both. Only the testing udev needs an initramfs now, so it doesn't really matter yet. However, it would be nice if dracut were stabilised at least a week before udev-18* to give time to play with it. It certainly needs to be stabilised before the news announcement of udev-18* going stable. With the latest genkernel, my initrd mounts /usr, however the fsck is never done because its mounted -- any solution for this? -- Your life is like a penny. You're going to lose it. The question is: How do you spend it? John Covici cov...@ccs.covici.com
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
Mike Edenfield wrote: If this is all you need, I recommend you use dracut. The default installation (no use-flags or optional modules) will product an initramfs that loads whatever you current rootfs and /usr partitions are. I've been working on updating the wiki with more detailed instructions; for your case what's there now ought to be plenty: http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Dracut Dracut is masked on ~amd64. Bugs me, as I'd rather use something like that than genkernel (I very much like building my own kernels; it helps me keep things lean, and keeps me familiar with the capabilities of current and future systems). But now I have to find time to learn how to use Genkernel. If we're going to be shoved into tight space like this, I'd be nice if the you can just use $x tools work on stable. I've got three previously-working systems at home I can't risk rebooting right now because of this udev+/usr nonsense. I almost invariably put /usr and /home on top of LVM, RAID or both. I'm pretty sure that a stable Dracut is a prerequisite for a stable udev-182+. Hopefully with more people taking interest in using an initramfs it will stabilize quickly. It's working for me on all of the systems I'm tried it, so I'm going to try switching a couple of servers at work over to using it. But none of them have anything particularly complex (no net boots, for example) so I don't know how much of a test case they'll be :) --Mike I'm still trying to figure out why my dracut init thingy isn't working right. If I use the init thingy, I can't su to root from a user. If I don't use the init thingy, I can su just fine. By the way, I boot the exact same kernel either way I boot. So, the fix doesn't seem to work for me and I have no plans of using genkernel. I dunno. Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words! Miss the compile output? Hint: EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS=--quiet-build=n
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 11:20:44 -0400, cov...@ccs.covici.com wrote: With the latest genkernel, my initrd mounts /usr, however the fsck is never done because its mounted -- any solution for this? ISTR this coming up recently and the solution being to run fsck from the shutdown runlevel. -- Neil Bothwick FINE: Tax for doing wrong. Tax: fine for doing fine. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
Dracut is masked on ~amd64. Bugs me, as I'd rather use something like that than genkernel (I very much like building my own kernels; it helps me keep things lean, and keeps me familiar with the capabilities of current and future systems). But now I have to find time to learn how to use Genkernel. I don't understand why people always say that they hate genkernel because they like to build the kernel on their own. You still can do this with genkernel. I've been doing it for years. This is my workflow after I merged a new kernel # copy old config to new kernel sources % zcat /proc/config.gz /usr/src/linux/.config # enter source dir % cd /usr/src/linux # run make oldconfig (help you keep things lean, keeps you familiar with the capabilities of current and future systems.) % make oldconfig # compile kernel and modules, generate initrd, install to /boot and /lib/modules, create symlinks in /boot % genkernel all # recompile 3rd party modules % module-rebuild rebuild You just have to tell genkernel not to make mrproper in /etc/genkernel.conf - so that it actually uses your kernel config, and in essence, let's you build your own kernel. I also tell genkernel not to run make clean - for a faster recompile if I have changed my kernel config. I love genkernel, it just makes life so much easier, you don't have enter every command manually. And still keeps it the gentoo-way: you can configure everything so that it does exactly what you wan't. Just take a look at /etc/genkernel.conf genkernel can do even more stuff for you. For example include a copy of /etc/mdadm.conf into your initramfs so that the initramfs can mount your software raid (even with metadata higher than 0.90 :) - this is where the kernel raid auto assembly fails). Or enable a splash theme for a graphical boot - if you like that sort of thing. I'm sure you're gonna love it to after you have used it for some time.
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 12:18 PM, Michael Hampicke gentoo-u...@hadt.biz wrote: Dracut is masked on ~amd64. Bugs me, as I'd rather use something like that than genkernel (I very much like building my own kernels; it helps me keep things lean, and keeps me familiar with the capabilities of current and future systems). But now I have to find time to learn how to use Genkernel. I don't understand why people always say that they hate genkernel because they like to build the kernel on their own. You still can do this with genkernel. I've been doing it for years. This is my workflow after I merged a new kernel # copy old config to new kernel sources % zcat /proc/config.gz /usr/src/linux/.config # enter source dir % cd /usr/src/linux # run make oldconfig (help you keep things lean, keeps you familiar with the capabilities of current and future systems.) % make oldconfig # compile kernel and modules, generate initrd, install to /boot and /lib/modules, create symlinks in /boot % genkernel all # recompile 3rd party modules % module-rebuild rebuild You just have to tell genkernel not to make mrproper in /etc/genkernel.conf - so that it actually uses your kernel config, and in essence, let's you build your own kernel. I also tell genkernel not to run make clean - for a faster recompile if I have changed my kernel config. I love genkernel, it just makes life so much easier, you don't have enter every command manually. And still keeps it the gentoo-way: you can configure everything so that it does exactly what you wan't. Just take a look at /etc/genkernel.conf genkernel can do even more stuff for you. For example include a copy of /etc/mdadm.conf into your initramfs so that the initramfs can mount your software raid (even with metadata higher than 0.90 :) - this is where the kernel raid auto assembly fails). Or enable a splash theme for a graphical boot - if you like that sort of thing. I'm sure you're gonna love it to after you have used it for some time. Sounds useful. At least parts of your workflow belong in the gentoo installation guide... -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
Michael Hampicke wrote: Dracut is masked on ~amd64. Bugs me, as I'd rather use something like that than genkernel (I very much like building my own kernels; it helps me keep things lean, and keeps me familiar with the capabilities of current and future systems). But now I have to find time to learn how to use Genkernel. I don't understand why people always say that they hate genkernel because they like to build the kernel on their own. You still can do this with genkernel. I've been doing it for years. This is my workflow after I merged a new kernel # copy old config to new kernel sources % zcat /proc/config.gz /usr/src/linux/.config # enter source dir % cd /usr/src/linux # run make oldconfig (help you keep things lean, keeps you familiar with the capabilities of current and future systems.) % make oldconfig # compile kernel and modules, generate initrd, install to /boot and /lib/modules, create symlinks in /boot % genkernel all # recompile 3rd party modules % module-rebuild rebuild You just have to tell genkernel not to make mrproper in /etc/genkernel.conf - so that it actually uses your kernel config, and in essence, let's you build your own kernel. I also tell genkernel not to run make clean - for a faster recompile if I have changed my kernel config. I love genkernel, it just makes life so much easier, you don't have enter every command manually. And still keeps it the gentoo-way: you can configure everything so that it does exactly what you wan't. Just take a look at /etc/genkernel.conf genkernel can do even more stuff for you. For example include a copy of /etc/mdadm.conf into your initramfs so that the initramfs can mount your software raid (even with metadata higher than 0.90 :) - this is where the kernel raid auto assembly fails). Or enable a splash theme for a graphical boot - if you like that sort of thing. I'm sure you're gonna love it to after you have used it for some time. I tried genkernel and it was a miserable failure for me. So, for me, I have no desire to use it. I have also read where others have the same experience so it is not just me. It may work fine for some but for others it does not. I plan to keep making mine the manual way. You can keep using genkernel if you want. BTW, mine is like this: copy old config make oldconfig make all make modules_install copy kernel to /boot That to me seems a LOT easier and it also works very well for me. Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words! Miss the compile output? Hint: EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS=--quiet-build=n
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 9:57 AM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Michael Hampicke wrote: SNIP I don't understand why people always say that they hate genkernel because they like to build the kernel on their own. You still can do this with genkernel. I've been doing it for years. SNIP I tried genkernel and it was a miserable failure for me. So, for me, I have no desire to use it. I have also read where others have the same experience so it is not just me. It may work fine for some but for others it does not. I plan to keep making mine the manual way. You can keep using genkernel if you want. BTW, mine is like this: copy old config make oldconfig make all make modules_install copy kernel to /boot That to me seems a LOT easier and it also works very well for me. Dale :-) :-) Until you add in the work of doing the initrd for each new kernel. I think that's Michael's point. I agree with you Dale. I do it the same way as you, except if I build an initrd I've done it completely by hand, building the whole directory structure, etc, then building it into the binary. That's a lot of work. Today we have two tools I know of, genkernel dracut, that are represented as doing this work for us. I'm interested in what genkernel did wrong for you, as well as how to use both tools successfully. - Mark
RE: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
From: Dale [mailto:rdalek1...@gmail.com] Mike Edenfield wrote: I'm pretty sure that a stable Dracut is a prerequisite for a stable udev-182+. Hopefully with more people taking interest in using an initramfs it will stabilize quickly. It's working for me on all of the systems I'm tried it, so I'm going to try switching a couple of servers at work over to using it. But none of them have anything particularly complex (no net boots, for example) so I don't know how much of a test case they'll be :) I'm still trying to figure out why my dracut init thingy isn't working right. If I use the init thingy, I can't su to root from a user. If I don't use the init thingy, I can su just fine. By the way, I boot the exact same kernel either way I boot. So, just to make sure I'm understanding you here (cuz it sounds kinda crazy) If you specify a dracut-created inittramfs in your grub.conf, your machine boots, but using 'su' to go from root - non-root fails? If you remove the initrd line from grub.conf and boot the exact same kernel, 'su' works fine? What's the error? Cuz once the pivot_root step happens and the real init is running, things in user-space should be *exactly* the same as if you had no initramfs. --Mike
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
Mike Edenfield wrote: From: Dale [mailto:rdalek1...@gmail.com] Mike Edenfield wrote: I'm pretty sure that a stable Dracut is a prerequisite for a stable udev-182+. Hopefully with more people taking interest in using an initramfs it will stabilize quickly. It's working for me on all of the systems I'm tried it, so I'm going to try switching a couple of servers at work over to using it. But none of them have anything particularly complex (no net boots, for example) so I don't know how much of a test case they'll be :) I'm still trying to figure out why my dracut init thingy isn't working right. If I use the init thingy, I can't su to root from a user. If I don't use the init thingy, I can su just fine. By the way, I boot the exact same kernel either way I boot. So, just to make sure I'm understanding you here (cuz it sounds kinda crazy) If you specify a dracut-created inittramfs in your grub.conf, your machine boots, but using 'su' to go from root - non-root fails? If you remove the initrd line from grub.conf and boot the exact same kernel, 'su' works fine? What's the error? Cuz once the pivot_root step happens and the real init is running, things in user-space should be *exactly* the same as if you had no initramfs. --Mike The other way around. When I boot using the init thingy, if I login as a user, dale in this case, I can not su to root. I think the error was something like authentication failed or something to that effect. I can reboot the exact same kernel but omit the init part, everything works fine. I even tried different kernels and it still does it. The reason it is a issue for me is that I use Konsole within KDE to emerge, edit config files and such. When I use the init thingy, none of those work. I get a error about paths being wrong or incorrect password. If I reboot without the init thingy, it works fine. I can't find any difference other than the init thingy being used. Weird, yea, but it sure doesn't work here. I found me another drive the other day. May be trying Kubuntu here pretty soon. This udev and /usr crap is just getting on my nerves. I don't have a lot of them left and I need to save the few I do have. At least by using something else, I don't have to fiddle with the crap and installs to fix things are a LOT quicker. I mentioned this before but it is just getting closer and closer. First time my system fails to boot because of this mess, it's decision time. Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words! Miss the compile output? Hint: EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS=--quiet-build=n
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On 27.03.2012 20:30, Dale wrote: May be trying Kubuntu here pretty soon. Be prepared for hard times using Kubuntu as it is now no major part of the Ubuntu family anymore. That means much less money and much less manpower. And if this issue with a init-thingy bothers you, Kubuntu will be living hell. As long as (K)Ubuntu works everything is fine, but in case of an error you just can't fix it. Everything is close tight to everything else. Change on thing and all fails. Greetings Sebastian signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
Sebastian Beßler wrote: On 27.03.2012 20:30, Dale wrote: May be trying Kubuntu here pretty soon. Be prepared for hard times using Kubuntu as it is now no major part of the Ubuntu family anymore. That means much less money and much less manpower. And if this issue with a init-thingy bothers you, Kubuntu will be living hell. As long as (K)Ubuntu works everything is fine, but in case of an error you just can't fix it. Everything is close tight to everything else. Change on thing and all fails. Greetings Sebastian Well, based on my experience with Mandrake back in the day, the init thingy is going to break for me here just like it did there. I'm thinking about Kubuntu but I may actually decide on something else. Thing is, it appears Gentoo is going to break my system so I may as well find something that I can install lots quicker to fix what is broke. Kubuntu is just one option. I installed it for my brother and it works fine, SO FAR. I may be jumping out of the frying pan into a fire but I think I need to at least try something else. This is very true if I continue to have issues with the init thingy and not being able to su to root. I know how to use a console but I only use it when needed. That's not very often and I sort of like it that way. Barring that, I could just put everything on / and just hope nothing goes bonkers and fills it up with useless errors or something in the messages file. I have had this happen before and /var was full, I mean FULL. I divide things so that I don't get conquered when it hits the fan. One thing about Linux, it has a LOT of options. Oh, there is talk of moving more things on -dev. If I didn't know better, I'd think someone was trying to just change Gentoo until it doesn't work any more. I dunno. Maybe I'm ready for a Apple now. o_O Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words! Miss the compile output? Hint: EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS=--quiet-build=n
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:09:23 -0700, Mark Knecht wrote: copy old config make oldconfig make all make modules_install copy kernel to /boot make all modules_install install does everything the last two lines do in a single command. That to me seems a LOT easier and it also works very well for me. Until you add in the work of doing the initrd for each new kernel. I think that's Michael's point. make all with build the initramfs, just set the source path in the kernel config. I agree with you Dale. I do it the same way as you, except if I build an initrd I've done it completely by hand, building the whole directory structure, etc, then building it into the binary. That's a lot of work. Yes it is, I now I used to waste my time like that. Now I have a config file that lists what needs to go into the initramfs and the kernel build automatically pulls everything in for me. The only other thing I need is the init script. So I get the benefit of hand crafting everything with the ease of automated building. -- Neil Bothwick Meow SPLAT! Woof SPLAT!Jeez, it's really raining today. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 13:30:41 -0500, Dale wrote: The other way around. When I boot using the init thingy, if I login as a user, dale in this case, I can not su to root. I think the error was something like authentication failed or something to that effect. I can reboot the exact same kernel but omit the init part, everything works fine. I even tried different kernels and it still does it. What is in the init script in your initramfs? -- Neil Bothwick Headline: Explosion At Sperm Bank, Nurses Overcome signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 4:04 PM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Sebastian Beßler wrote: On 27.03.2012 20:30, Dale wrote: May be trying Kubuntu here pretty soon. Be prepared for hard times using Kubuntu as it is now no major part of the Ubuntu family anymore. That means much less money and much less manpower. And if this issue with a init-thingy bothers you, Kubuntu will be living hell. As long as (K)Ubuntu works everything is fine, but in case of an error you just can't fix it. Everything is close tight to everything else. Change on thing and all fails. Greetings Sebastian Well, based on my experience with Mandrake back in the day, the init thingy is going to break for me here just like it did there. I'm thinking about Kubuntu but I may actually decide on something else. Thing is, it appears Gentoo is going to break my system so I may as well find something that I can install lots quicker to fix what is broke. Kubuntu is just one option. I installed it for my brother and it works fine, SO FAR. I may be jumping out of the frying pan into a fire but I think I need to at least try something else. This is very true if I continue to have issues with the init thingy and not being able to su to root. I know how to use a console but I only use it when needed. That's not very often and I sort of like it that way. Barring that, I could just put everything on / and just hope nothing goes bonkers and fills it up with useless errors or something in the messages file. I have had this happen before and /var was full, I mean FULL. I divide things so that I don't get conquered when it hits the fan. One thing about Linux, it has a LOT of options. Oh, there is talk of moving more things on -dev. If I didn't know better, I'd think someone was trying to just change Gentoo until it doesn't work any more. I dunno. Maybe I'm ready for a Apple now. o_O The reason I like Gentoo (and why I've moved so much stuff to it) is because it lets me get in and have much finer _optional_ control over many things with minimal fuss. Ubuntu-derived distributions make it very, very difficult to change very, very many things, while retaining an update-stable setup. As long as you don't have to stray to far from their One True Way, Ubuntu (or most Linux distros, actually) should be fine. The annoying thing about Ubuntu is how their One True Way changes dramatically every six months to a year. -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
Mark Knecht wrote: On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 9:57 AM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Michael Hampicke wrote: SNIP I don't understand why people always say that they hate genkernel because they like to build the kernel on their own. You still can do this with genkernel. I've been doing it for years. SNIP I tried genkernel and it was a miserable failure for me. So, for me, I have no desire to use it. I have also read where others have the same experience so it is not just me. It may work fine for some but for others it does not. I plan to keep making mine the manual way. You can keep using genkernel if you want. BTW, mine is like this: copy old config make oldconfig make all make modules_install copy kernel to /boot That to me seems a LOT easier and it also works very well for me. Dale :-) :-) Until you add in the work of doing the initrd for each new kernel. I think that's Michael's point. I agree with you Dale. I do it the same way as you, except if I build an initrd I've done it completely by hand, building the whole directory structure, etc, then building it into the binary. That's a lot of work. Today we have two tools I know of, genkernel dracut, that are represented as doing this work for us. I'm interested in what genkernel did wrong for you, as well as how to use both tools successfully. - Mark Thing is, I can't get dracut to boot a system as I use it. See my other post. Right now, my plan is to mask udev at what it is and either switch to another distro, hope someone figures out why dracut isn't working or just move everything to / and hope it doesn't ever screw up right after I go to bed and full up / with errors in the messages file. I had this happen once. Having /var on it's own partition was the only thing that saved my butt. The thing about switching to a distro that uses a init thingy, I don't have to mess with it. Someone else makes the stupid thing. Just weighing out my options. There are lots of things to weigh to. Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words! Miss the compile output? Hint: EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS=--quiet-build=n
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 1:36 PM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: SNIP Right now, my plan is to mask udev at what it is and either switch to another distro SNIP Just remember, with distros it's the device you know for the devil you don't know... I don't understand why any of this /usr /udev stuff is bothering you. Do you really use a separate /usr? Aren't you on stable like me or are you on ~amd64? Good luck. I'm positive you'll come to your senses about this Ubuntu nonsense! ;-))) Cheers, Mark
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
Michael Mol wrote: On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 4:04 PM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Sebastian Beßler wrote: On 27.03.2012 20:30, Dale wrote: May be trying Kubuntu here pretty soon. Be prepared for hard times using Kubuntu as it is now no major part of the Ubuntu family anymore. That means much less money and much less manpower. And if this issue with a init-thingy bothers you, Kubuntu will be living hell. As long as (K)Ubuntu works everything is fine, but in case of an error you just can't fix it. Everything is close tight to everything else. Change on thing and all fails. Greetings Sebastian Well, based on my experience with Mandrake back in the day, the init thingy is going to break for me here just like it did there. I'm thinking about Kubuntu but I may actually decide on something else. Thing is, it appears Gentoo is going to break my system so I may as well find something that I can install lots quicker to fix what is broke. Kubuntu is just one option. I installed it for my brother and it works fine, SO FAR. I may be jumping out of the frying pan into a fire but I think I need to at least try something else. This is very true if I continue to have issues with the init thingy and not being able to su to root. I know how to use a console but I only use it when needed. That's not very often and I sort of like it that way. Barring that, I could just put everything on / and just hope nothing goes bonkers and fills it up with useless errors or something in the messages file. I have had this happen before and /var was full, I mean FULL. I divide things so that I don't get conquered when it hits the fan. One thing about Linux, it has a LOT of options. Oh, there is talk of moving more things on -dev. If I didn't know better, I'd think someone was trying to just change Gentoo until it doesn't work any more. I dunno. Maybe I'm ready for a Apple now. o_O The reason I like Gentoo (and why I've moved so much stuff to it) is because it lets me get in and have much finer _optional_ control over many things with minimal fuss. Ubuntu-derived distributions make it very, very difficult to change very, very many things, while retaining an update-stable setup. As long as you don't have to stray to far from their One True Way, Ubuntu (or most Linux distros, actually) should be fine. The annoying thing about Ubuntu is how their One True Way changes dramatically every six months to a year. I like, even love, Gentoo. Thing is, if it gets to where it doesn't work like it should for me, there's no point in me using it. If I wanted a OS that doesn't work well for me, I'd be buying M$'s crap. Hey, it does install fairly fast but it is pretty crappy. LOL I have said this about meeting a new lady, time tells. If I get to the point where I have to use a init thingy and I can't get one to work, Gentoo is no longer for me. Working is a must have thing for my OS. I don't mind putting in the effort to have a great install or putting in the effort to update it but it has to boot and work. Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words! Miss the compile output? Hint: EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS=--quiet-build=n
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 1:46 PM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: SNIP I like, even love, Gentoo. Thing is, if it gets to where it doesn't work like it should for me, there's no point in me using it. If I wanted a OS that doesn't work well for me, I'd be buying M$'s crap. Hey, it does install fairly fast but it is pretty crappy. LOL What? Me worry? Chill Dale. The Gentoo devs will get it there. And what will you do if Ubuntu doesn't boot? Learn another distro? Nahh... ;-) - Mark
RE: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
From: Neil Bothwick [mailto:n...@digimed.co.uk] Yes it is, I now I used to waste my time like that. Now I have a config file that lists what needs to go into the initramfs and the kernel build automatically pulls everything in for me. The only other thing I need is the init script. So I get the benefit of hand crafting everything with the ease of automated building. Are you saying your kernel build automatically rebuilds your initramfs for you? I'm using dracut now and I'm looking for a way to automate the rebuild and installation of the initramfs image. I have them manually symlinked in /boot to /boot/initramfs.img and /boot/initramgs.img.old, to match the vmlinuz and vmlinuz.old symlinks from `make install`. Unfortunately I have to manage those by hand, now, or the initramfs images get out of sync. I guess I could write my own shell script to do it but is there an existing mechanism to hook into for this? --Mike
RE: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
From: Dale [mailto:rdalek1...@gmail.com] Thing is, I can't get dracut to boot a system as I use it. See my other post. Right now, my plan is to mask udev at what it is and either switch to another distro, hope someone figures out why dracut isn't working or just move everything to / and hope it doesn't ever screw up right after I go to bed and full up / with errors in the messages file. I had this happen once. Having /var on it's own partition was the only thing that saved my butt. Ok, silly question time: if this is a concern for you, why not leave /var on its own partition? Just merge / and /usr and leave it at that? --Mike
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
Mark Knecht wrote: On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 1:46 PM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: SNIP I like, even love, Gentoo. Thing is, if it gets to where it doesn't work like it should for me, there's no point in me using it. If I wanted a OS that doesn't work well for me, I'd be buying M$'s crap. Hey, it does install fairly fast but it is pretty crappy. LOL What? Me worry? Chill Dale. The Gentoo devs will get it there. And what will you do if Ubuntu doesn't boot? Learn another distro? Nahh... ;-) - Mark That's why I want something that I can install fast. Gentoo certainly isn't the right choice for that. If Kubuntu fails, I can just reinstall and not format /home. It doesn't take to long and I'll be back up and running. I already keep a fairly up to date sysrescue so having something for some other distro wouldn't be a huge issue. Right now, if Gentoo fails to boot because of the init thingy, I have no idea how to fix it. None at all. I know the basics of what it does but no idea how to fix it when it breaks. That's where I am now with regard to my other post. I can't su to root when using the init thingy but can when I don't use the init thingy. I have no clue where to even start to fix it. Is it dracut itself? Is it some script? Is it some option I gave it that conflicts with something else? I have absolutely no idea why but I know it has something to do with me using the init thingy since it works fine without it. Me clueless since this is something I tried to avoid in the past and not sure why it is needed now either. More questions than answers for sure. Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words! Miss the compile output? Hint: EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS=--quiet-build=n
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:43:38 -0500 Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Mark Knecht wrote: On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 1:46 PM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: SNIP I like, even love, Gentoo. Thing is, if it gets to where it doesn't work like it should for me, there's no point in me using it. If I wanted a OS that doesn't work well for me, I'd be buying M$'s crap. Hey, it does install fairly fast but it is pretty crappy. LOL What? Me worry? Chill Dale. The Gentoo devs will get it there. And what will you do if Ubuntu doesn't boot? Learn another distro? Nahh... ;-) - Mark That's why I want something that I can install fast. Gentoo certainly isn't the right choice for that. If Kubuntu fails, I can just reinstall and not format /home. It doesn't take to long and I'll be back up and running. I already keep a fairly up to date sysrescue so having something for some other distro wouldn't be a huge issue. See this mountain peak you think you see in front of you? The one you call Everest? You got it wrong about that mountain Dale. It's a little mole hill in the back yard. Make / big enough to contain /usr as well. Move stuff over and delete the /usr partition. Everything you fear about udev instantly ceases to exist and is no longer a problem. Sorted. Right now, if Gentoo fails to boot because of the init thingy, I have no idea how to fix it. None at all. I know the basics of what it does but no idea how to fix it when it breaks. That's where I am now with regard to my other post. I can't su to root when using the init thingy but can when I don't use the init thingy. I have no clue where to even start to fix it. Is it dracut itself? Is it some script? Is it some option I gave it that conflicts with something else? I have absolutely no idea why but I know it has something to do with me using the init thingy since it works fine without it. Me clueless since this is something I tried to avoid in the past and not sure why it is needed now either. More questions than answers for sure. Dale :-) :-) -- Alan McKinnnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
Mark Knecht wrote: On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 1:36 PM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: SNIP Right now, my plan is to mask udev at what it is and either switch to another distro SNIP Just remember, with distros it's the device you know for the devil you don't know... I don't understand why any of this /usr /udev stuff is bothering you. Do you really use a separate /usr? Aren't you on stable like me or are you on ~amd64? Good luck. I'm positive you'll come to your senses about this Ubuntu nonsense! ;-))) Cheers, Mark My plan was to put / on ext4, /boot on ext2 and everything else on LVM. That would incluse /usr, /usr/portage, /var and /home. I have not done that yet because doing it would force me to make a choice very soon since this mess is coming pretty soon. The reason it is bothering me is because of the mess it is creating for me. If I am the only one it bothers, then maybe it is time for me to use something else. That way everyone else can be happy and not have to listen to me grumble about it. I would like to make this work and have been missing with it for a month at least. I'm not making any progress tho. Right now, given the issues that I am already having, this is looking to be a deal breaker. It reminds me of when my ex kept lying to me about things. I can deal with it for a while but at some point you have to decide if it is something you want to put up with or time to leave. I left my ex, that's why she is called my ex. I didn't like making the decision since we had a lot of other things in common but I hate being lied to even worse. I like Gentoo a lot but it may not work for what I want in the near future. Also, this makes me thing back to hal. The only things is, there were ways to get rid of hal. There is not many options on this mess. If I'm going to make this work, it's going to have to be a long term solution, supporting /var on a separate partition as well. That will be next I suspect. Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words! Miss the compile output? Hint: EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS=--quiet-build=n
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
Mike Edenfield wrote: From: Dale [mailto:rdalek1...@gmail.com] Thing is, I can't get dracut to boot a system as I use it. See my other post. Right now, my plan is to mask udev at what it is and either switch to another distro, hope someone figures out why dracut isn't working or just move everything to / and hope it doesn't ever screw up right after I go to bed and full up / with errors in the messages file. I had this happen once. Having /var on it's own partition was the only thing that saved my butt. Ok, silly question time: if this is a concern for you, why not leave /var on its own partition? Just merge / and /usr and leave it at that? --Mike Post crossing but I wanted to put / on ext4, /boot on ext2 and everything else on LVM. I been wanting to do that for a long while but wanted to learn LVM pretty well first. I'm trying to learn this init thingy to but it's not working to well so far. Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words! Miss the compile output? Hint: EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS=--quiet-build=n
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 2:43 PM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: SNIP Right now, if Gentoo fails to boot because of the init thingy, I have no idea how to fix it. None at all. I understand. My question is why are you even using the initrd? There's no requirement to use it today, at least on stable. There's not even a discussion I've seen that says we _ever_ have to use it if we don't use a separate /usr, so I'm not understanding where the problem is. This is just my 2 cents, but assuming you have a lot of disk space why not do a second Gentoo install, use initrd there to learn about it, and just STOP doing updates to your current environment. If you don't update it then it's not going to fail due to an update, right? I'm not picking on you or anything like that. It just seems to me that you're worrying about the worst instead of doing the easiest. Let's let the heavy lifters do some work, watch people get through it, and only then decide what to do. No reason to cause problems with our systems. I've masked a few packages and am being careful about updates. Good luck, Mark
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:59:30 -0500 Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Mark Knecht wrote: On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 1:36 PM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: SNIP Right now, my plan is to mask udev at what it is and either switch to another distro SNIP Just remember, with distros it's the device you know for the devil you don't know... I don't understand why any of this /usr /udev stuff is bothering you. Do you really use a separate /usr? Aren't you on stable like me or are you on ~amd64? Good luck. I'm positive you'll come to your senses about this Ubuntu nonsense! ;-))) Cheers, Mark My plan was to put / on ext4, /boot on ext2 and everything else on LVM. That would incluse /usr, /usr/portage, /var and /home. I have not done that yet because doing it would force me to make a choice very soon since this mess is coming pretty soon. That's easy to fix. It takes a while and it's mind-numbingly boring, but it's easy. All you need is a decent amount of free disk space as you will shuffle things around just like in that 15 pieces game. Assuming / is the first (or second) partition on a disk: Measure how much data is on the file system. Measure how much data is on the /usr file system. Move partitions after / on the disk out of the way creating enough free space to contain current / and /usr. Enlarge / partition, enlarge the file system on it, copy contents of /usr there. Arrange the rest of your disk the way you want it (either with or without LVM, both are easy enough to do). Move the rest of your data back to it's final destination. Delete any last remnants of the old /usr partition. And all your worries about initramfs will go away. Trust me (no, not because I sell used cars, but because I do this for a living and have done it several times) -- Alan McKinnnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
Alan McKinnon wrote: On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:43:38 -0500 Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Mark Knecht wrote: On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 1:46 PM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: SNIP I like, even love, Gentoo. Thing is, if it gets to where it doesn't work like it should for me, there's no point in me using it. If I wanted a OS that doesn't work well for me, I'd be buying M$'s crap. Hey, it does install fairly fast but it is pretty crappy. LOL What? Me worry? Chill Dale. The Gentoo devs will get it there. And what will you do if Ubuntu doesn't boot? Learn another distro? Nahh... ;-) - Mark That's why I want something that I can install fast. Gentoo certainly isn't the right choice for that. If Kubuntu fails, I can just reinstall and not format /home. It doesn't take to long and I'll be back up and running. I already keep a fairly up to date sysrescue so having something for some other distro wouldn't be a huge issue. See this mountain peak you think you see in front of you? The one you call Everest? You got it wrong about that mountain Dale. It's a little mole hill in the back yard. Make / big enough to contain /usr as well. Move stuff over and delete the /usr partition. Everything you fear about udev instantly ceases to exist and is no longer a problem. Sorted. But what about using LVM? People was all for me using it a while back and I want to use it, see other post, but now because of this, I'm not supposed to. Look left, look right, look left, look right. Get the idea? ROFL Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
Mark Knecht wrote: On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 2:43 PM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: SNIP Right now, if Gentoo fails to boot because of the init thingy, I have no idea how to fix it. None at all. I understand. My question is why are you even using the initrd? There's no requirement to use it today, at least on stable. There's not even a discussion I've seen that says we _ever_ have to use it if we don't use a separate /usr, so I'm not understanding where the problem is. This is just my 2 cents, but assuming you have a lot of disk space why not do a second Gentoo install, use initrd there to learn about it, and just STOP doing updates to your current environment. If you don't update it then it's not going to fail due to an update, right? I'm not picking on you or anything like that. It just seems to me that you're worrying about the worst instead of doing the easiest. Let's let the heavy lifters do some work, watch people get through it, and only then decide what to do. No reason to cause problems with our systems. I've masked a few packages and am being careful about updates. Good luck, Mark Right now it won't be a problem but when I get my set up like I want it, it will be. I'm trying to learn it on a system that doesn't care right now. As posted elsewhere, if I boot with the init thingy then I can't su to root. My solution right now was to boot without the init thingy. However, if I get to where I can set up my system like I want, that would be a problem for me. This is holding me back from doing several things on my system and one of them is using LVM for everything but / and /boot. Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words! Miss the compile output? Hint: EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS=--quiet-build=n
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 17:31:06 -0500 Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Alan McKinnon wrote: On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:59:30 -0500 Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Mark Knecht wrote: On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 1:36 PM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: SNIP Right now, my plan is to mask udev at what it is and either switch to another distro SNIP Just remember, with distros it's the device you know for the devil you don't know... I don't understand why any of this /usr /udev stuff is bothering you. Do you really use a separate /usr? Aren't you on stable like me or are you on ~amd64? Good luck. I'm positive you'll come to your senses about this Ubuntu nonsense! ;-))) Cheers, Mark My plan was to put / on ext4, /boot on ext2 and everything else on LVM. That would incluse /usr, /usr/portage, /var and /home. I have not done that yet because doing it would force me to make a choice very soon since this mess is coming pretty soon. That's easy to fix. It takes a while and it's mind-numbingly boring, but it's easy. All you need is a decent amount of free disk space as you will shuffle things around just like in that 15 pieces game. Assuming / is the first (or second) partition on a disk: Measure how much data is on the file system. Measure how much data is on the /usr file system. Move partitions after / on the disk out of the way creating enough free space to contain current / and /usr. Enlarge / partition, enlarge the file system on it, copy contents of /usr there. Arrange the rest of your disk the way you want it (either with or without LVM, both are easy enough to do). Move the rest of your data back to it's final destination. Delete any last remnants of the old /usr partition. And all your worries about initramfs will go away. Trust me (no, not because I sell used cars, but because I do this for a living and have done it several times) Right now, I doubt my current / partition can hold all the /usr stuff. It would require a complete undoing then redoing, like you just laid out. I have done this before but I would like to only have to do it once and be done. That is why I want to use LVM for everything but / but if I could get this to work right, I wouldn't mind having / on LVM too. / on LVM isn't all that useful, simply because it's size doesn't change much and there's no real need to grow it. It's not like /var. Binary distros put LVm on / not because it's a good idea but because they like to have consistency. You don't need that because you know what you built and it doesn't need to be supported by a corporate employee far away. You are worrying yourself needlessly about this init thing. Just take some small measures to ensure that it will never be a factor. Right now, I have very little confidence in this init thingy and me getting it to work much less able to fix it even it doesn't boot for some reason. sighs Dale :-) :-) -- Alan McKinnnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 3:35 PM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Mark Knecht wrote: On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 2:43 PM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: SNIP Right now, if Gentoo fails to boot because of the init thingy, I have no idea how to fix it. None at all. I understand. My question is why are you even using the initrd? There's no requirement to use it today, at least on stable. There's not even a discussion I've seen that says we _ever_ have to use it if we don't use a separate /usr, so I'm not understanding where the problem is. This is just my 2 cents, but assuming you have a lot of disk space why not do a second Gentoo install, use initrd there to learn about it, and just STOP doing updates to your current environment. If you don't update it then it's not going to fail due to an update, right? I'm not picking on you or anything like that. It just seems to me that you're worrying about the worst instead of doing the easiest. Let's let the heavy lifters do some work, watch people get through it, and only then decide what to do. No reason to cause problems with our systems. I've masked a few packages and am being careful about updates. Good luck, Mark Right now it won't be a problem but when I get my set up like I want it, it will be. I'm trying to learn it on a system that doesn't care right now. As posted elsewhere, if I boot with the init thingy then I can't su to root. My solution right now was to boot without the init thingy. However, if I get to where I can set up my system like I want, that would be a problem for me. This is holding me back from doing several things on my system and one of them is using LVM for everything but / and /boot. Dale I understand. Like they say 'in war all the plans change when you fire the first bullet'. Just make new plans. Do the easy thing for awhile. Do nothing. Just read, watch, learn but most important don't do updates. Just wait. Patience is a virtue! Cheers, Mark
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:43:38 -0500, Dale wrote:
That's why I want something that I can install fast. Gentoo certainly
isn't the right choice for that. If Kubuntu fails, I can just reinstall
and not format /home.
That's why ${DEITY} gave us backups: no need to reinstall just roll back
to the last working version. Even if your backup is a couple of weeks
old, it with be more up to date than any distro CD.
Right now, if Gentoo fails to boot because of the init thingy, I have no
idea how to fix it. None at all. I know the basics of what it does but
no idea how to fix it when it breaks. That's where I am now with regard
to my other post. I can't su to root when using the init thingy but can
when I don't use the init thingy. I have no clue where to even start to
fix it.
Why not post the details of it? All an initramfs is is an init script and
a few binaries. Extract the init script, the initramfs file is a plain
cpio archive, and post it here.
Me clueless since this is something I tried to avoid in the past and not
sure why it is needed now either.
Because upstream decided to work this way to avoid the problems caused by
the anachronistic separation of / and /usr. This is not so much a
decision by the udev devs as an acceptance that the current filesystem
organisation was becoming ever more unworkable in the general case.
--
Neil Bothwick
Self-explanatory: technospeak for Incomprehensible undocumented
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Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
Neil Bothwick wrote:
On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:43:38 -0500, Dale wrote:
That's why I want something that I can install fast. Gentoo certainly
isn't the right choice for that. If Kubuntu fails, I can just reinstall
and not format /home.
That's why ${DEITY} gave us backups: no need to reinstall just roll back
to the last working version. Even if your backup is a couple of weeks
old, it with be more up to date than any distro CD.
I don't have the space for a backup, certainly not a full back up of
even just the OS. I might could do one without all the KDE and other
extras but that's not a whole lot better than just reinstalling. I keep
copies of /etc and my world file on a stick thingy.
Right now, if Gentoo fails to boot because of the init thingy, I have no
idea how to fix it. None at all. I know the basics of what it does but
no idea how to fix it when it breaks. That's where I am now with regard
to my other post. I can't su to root when using the init thingy but can
when I don't use the init thingy. I have no clue where to even start to
fix it.
Why not post the details of it? All an initramfs is is an init script and
a few binaries. Extract the init script, the initramfs file is a plain
cpio archive, and post it here.
I did post it a week or so ago in another thread. I thought it was a
KDE issue at first since I first noticed it in KDE. After a few other
tests, I found out it did the same outside of KDE. I went back to see
what was updated and didn't find anything that I thought could cause
such a thing so I thought I would try a older kernel, with no init
thingy. It worked. Then I tried the exact same kernel as I was using
before but removed the init options. It worked then. So far the only
way I can get it to fail is to boot with the inti thingy. That is even
tho I used the exact same kernel. Confuses me too.
Me clueless since this is something I tried to avoid in the past and not
sure why it is needed now either.
Because upstream decided to work this way to avoid the problems caused by
the anachronistic separation of / and /usr. This is not so much a
decision by the udev devs as an acceptance that the current filesystem
organisation was becoming ever more unworkable in the general case.
Yea, I know all that. They are breaking one thing to fix something else
so that they don't have to deal with fixing what they broke. I got that
a long time ago. ;-)
When I reboot, I'll use the init thingy and post all this in a new thread.
Dale
:-) :-)
--
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or
how you interpreted my words!
Miss the compile output? Hint:
EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS=--quiet-build=n
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
Alan McKinnon wrote: On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 17:31:06 -0500 Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Alan McKinnon wrote: On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:59:30 -0500 Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Mark Knecht wrote: On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 1:36 PM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: SNIP Right now, my plan is to mask udev at what it is and either switch to another distro SNIP Just remember, with distros it's the device you know for the devil you don't know... I don't understand why any of this /usr /udev stuff is bothering you. Do you really use a separate /usr? Aren't you on stable like me or are you on ~amd64? Good luck. I'm positive you'll come to your senses about this Ubuntu nonsense! ;-))) Cheers, Mark My plan was to put / on ext4, /boot on ext2 and everything else on LVM. That would incluse /usr, /usr/portage, /var and /home. I have not done that yet because doing it would force me to make a choice very soon since this mess is coming pretty soon. That's easy to fix. It takes a while and it's mind-numbingly boring, but it's easy. All you need is a decent amount of free disk space as you will shuffle things around just like in that 15 pieces game. Assuming / is the first (or second) partition on a disk: Measure how much data is on the file system. Measure how much data is on the /usr file system. Move partitions after / on the disk out of the way creating enough free space to contain current / and /usr. Enlarge / partition, enlarge the file system on it, copy contents of /usr there. Arrange the rest of your disk the way you want it (either with or without LVM, both are easy enough to do). Move the rest of your data back to it's final destination. Delete any last remnants of the old /usr partition. And all your worries about initramfs will go away. Trust me (no, not because I sell used cars, but because I do this for a living and have done it several times) Right now, I doubt my current / partition can hold all the /usr stuff. It would require a complete undoing then redoing, like you just laid out. I have done this before but I would like to only have to do it once and be done. That is why I want to use LVM for everything but / but if I could get this to work right, I wouldn't mind having / on LVM too. / on LVM isn't all that useful, simply because it's size doesn't change much and there's no real need to grow it. It's not like /var. Binary distros put LVm on / not because it's a good idea but because they like to have consistency. You don't need that because you know what you built and it doesn't need to be supported by a corporate employee far away. You are worrying yourself needlessly about this init thing. Just take some small measures to ensure that it will never be a factor. So throw out my plans and just do it their way? In that case, I may as well use Fedora since it sort of started there. Maybe that is what they wanted and planned. Screw everyone using a source based distro and they will just come use ours. This is starting to make me paranoid now. ROFL Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words! Miss the compile output? Hint: EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS=--quiet-build=n
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 17:28:17 -0500, Dale wrote about Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought: Alan McKinnon wrote: [snip] Everything you fear about udev instantly ceases to exist and is no longer a problem. Sorted. And /var ?? But what about using LVM? People was all for me using it a while back and I want to use it, see other post, but now because of this, I'm not supposed to. I promised you (plural) an easy initramfs solution a few months back. I have an initramfs image of 1.6MiB that supports LVM and mounts /usr, /var and any other LVM volume or partition you wish. I have been able to boot with it since about January (hardware issues on my development box permitting). I will release a Python script to build it from a single command in the next 10 days or 2 weeks. The real chore will be writing the documentation (as with most software development efforts). For me, the best part is its diminutive size, as my /boot partitions are only 32MiB each. The fact that it works every time should make you feel secure against whatever the udev developers can throw at us. -- Regards, Dave [RLU #314465] *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* dwn...@ntlworld.com (David W Noon) *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
David W Noon wrote: On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 17:28:17 -0500, Dale wrote about Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought: Alan McKinnon wrote: [snip] Everything you fear about udev instantly ceases to exist and is no longer a problem. Sorted. And /var ?? But what about using LVM? People was all for me using it a while back and I want to use it, see other post, but now because of this, I'm not supposed to. I promised you (plural) an easy initramfs solution a few months back. I have an initramfs image of 1.6MiB that supports LVM and mounts /usr, /var and any other LVM volume or partition you wish. I have been able to boot with it since about January (hardware issues on my development box permitting). I will release a Python script to build it from a single command in the next 10 days or 2 weeks. The real chore will be writing the documentation (as with most software development efforts). For me, the best part is its diminutive size, as my /boot partitions are only 32MiB each. The fact that it works every time should make you feel secure against whatever the udev developers can throw at us. The reason I want to use dracut is because that is what is supposed to be supported by Gentoo. I also read where others have used it with no problems. I was also hoping to learn how it works, or is supposed to work, so that if something happens I can figure out a fix for it. So far, I broke it. lol I know genkernel is another approach but I just learned to hate that a long time ago. While not as bad as hal, it's a close second. I might also add, mine does boot, it's just that the system doesn't work right when I do boot with it. From what I understand, it doesn't make sense as to why it doesn't work. In a way what it does is really simple. Mount /, then mount /usr and whatever else, then switch to the new / and boot. I have no idea why that makes me unable to su to root. From what I have read, once it does the switch root thing, it's done and should work the same. Well, I'm going to go have a good soak in the tub on this mess. Sooth my nerves a bit. :/ Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words! Miss the compile output? Hint: EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS=--quiet-build=n
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Tue, 2012-03-27 at 18:18 +0200, Michael Hampicke wrote: Dracut is masked on ~amd64. Bugs me, as I'd rather use something like I love genkernel, it just makes life so much easier, you don't have enter every command manually. And still keeps it the gentoo-way: you can configure everything so that it does exactly what you wan't. Just take a look at /etc/genkernel.conf genkernel can do even more stuff for you. For example include a copy of /etc/mdadm.conf into your initramfs so that the initramfs can mount your software raid (even with metadata higher than 0.90 :) - this is where the kernel raid auto assembly fails). Or enable a splash theme for a graphical boot - if you like that sort of thing. I'm sure you're gonna love it to after you have used it for some time. There are two problems with genkernel - historicly it was greeted with enthusiasm ... until you got an unbootable system which with early versions happened all too often - thats why I dropped it and have only just started to experiment with it again because of the /usr changes. Secondly, it handles only simple cases and cant do (for instance) in-kernel suspend to disk without manual intervention - there are probably a number of other cases too. BillK
Re: [gentoo-user] InitRAMFS - boot expert sought
On Tuesday 03/27/12 21:19:00 CST, Mike Edenfield wrote: On 3/27/2012 6:36 AM, Helmut Jarausch wrote: Hi, I've been looking for simple method to create a simple initramfs to just mount the /usr partition. I've found http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Basic_initramfs_used_to_check_and_mount_/usr If this is all you need, I recommend you use dracut. The default installation (no use-flags or optional modules) will product an initramfs that loads whatever you current rootfs and /usr partitions are. I've been working on updating the wiki with more detailed instructions; for your case what's there now ought to be plenty: http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Dracut This guide looks a bit more simple. It doesn't need any other tools except some basic commands. http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Initramfs -- oooO: (..): :\.(:::Oooo:: ::\_)::(..):: :::)./::: ::(_/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature
