initrd vs. chroot (was: Re: 2.1.95 freezes were my fault; kmod patch)

Werner Almesberger (almesber@lrc.di.epfl.ch)
Wed, 15 Apr 1998 16:40:49 +0200 (MET DST)

Adam J. Richter wrote:
> If there is interest, I would be happy to produce a patch to
> delete all of the unnecessary kernel code and adjust
> Documentation/initrd.txt to talk about "exec chroot /mnt /sbin/init"
> as the way from an initial ramdisk to exit.

Don't forget that initrd can also proceed to an NFS-mounted root. Putting
all the tools needed for this (ifconfig, route, perhaps some BOOTP/RARP
client, mount) onto an initrd is certainly a good idea, but you want to
take some time for careful testing of all cases before removing the old
procedure(s).

Also, with exec chroot /mnt ... , can you get rid of initrd afterwards ?
/ should be busy because of /mnt, so you're stuck without something like
the magic in change_root. This is particularly bad on systems with a big
initrd which always need it to boot (i.e. not just during installation).
I'm sure somebody out there must have a notebook with the hard disk on
PCMCIA or such ...

- Werner

-- 
  _________________________________________________________________________
 / Werner Almesberger, DI-ICA,EPFL,CH   werner.almesberger@lrc.di.epfl.ch /
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