Re: [gentoo-dev] eselect init

[Tom Wijsman <TomWij@gentoo.org>]

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On Sat, 25 May 2013 14:29:12 +0300
Sergei Trofimovich <slyfox@gentoo.org> wrote:

> If you can't change options at boot time it's very simple to get
> unbootable system.

https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=465236#c34

In above Bug #465236 at Comment #34 the suggestion has been made to
maybe call the wrapper /sbin/einit and leave /sbin/init at a sane
default. That way the user should still be able to boot the Gentoo
default as long as it does not end up being removed from the system.

In other words, changing init=/sbin/einit back to init/sbin/init fixes
things; I don't think it's asked too much to add init=/sbin/einit in
the bootloader or kernel in the alternative init systems documentation.

> Just curious, who does such systems and how root filesystem (+ it's
> mount options) is expected to be found there?

I don't see how this is a problem; the kernel loads what you have
set as init and after that you have root filesystem access, possibly
read only at this point but you don't have to find the root fs here.

> I guess EFI allows you to set bootargs via EFI UI.

Not so sure about this, but most people end up hardcoding it in the
kernel; you can do this by setting CONFIG_CMDLINE.

> I'd go for init=/sbin/gentoo-init and make all the messy stuff there.
> Otherwise by breaking /sbin/init it would be hard to find proper
> name of, say, SYSVs /sbin/init. How would you call it?

Yeah, this is what the /sbin/einit suggestion above tries to resolve.

We shouldn't have our users guess at names here, all they should
know is to add einit if they wish to be able to switch and that
removing it will load the default init system present on Gentoo...

-- 
With kind regards,

Tom Wijsman (TomWij)
Gentoo Developer

E-mail address  : TomWij@gentoo.org
GPG Public Key  : 6D34E57D
GPG Fingerprint : C165 AF18 AB4C 400B C3D2  ABF0 95B2 1FCD 6D34 E57D

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