From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1S7nrS-0004SX-61 for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Wed, 14 Mar 2012 13:03:26 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 39585E08AF; Wed, 14 Mar 2012 13:03:17 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-bk0-f53.google.com (mail-bk0-f53.google.com [209.85.214.53]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C9494E088B for ; Wed, 14 Mar 2012 13:02:46 +0000 (UTC) Received: by bkwj4 with SMTP id j4so1488257bkw.40 for ; Wed, 14 Mar 2012 06:02:46 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=mime-version:sender:in-reply-to:references:date :x-google-sender-auth:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; bh=iXG4fCFSf/p1WOlBwI0io8l/5rHLcYRMpr7jLaYLZUQ=; b=bSvAM3JVw11e93g/YYl5FOmHiMmOYEExqbflXuuYFsf/0UH6lh0XPk5UYQPxyFUnyf drxevlwC2t8rN1bYDu2uaDYqumybIQ16d75opSY+NDdygNrOzUMekqdFG0OrG88GNs3r 1ZAKL/B+5Zm3DxTSj/ctRXcmTLeE/syhF/3/ZZlFa9Bj9EjlOgw6BAN+deKSq/dlTpcA jbSVeUb4125cBEXYhITt55dy2UlD76bj9HeYA9rHz88DcSvCFPCeAsdrbmtmZ0tOjNdP AZkBxsBohKAlCSuE5eKz8aF3d4iNNn/j7gE56Cfz9tWt7Nxnznvgb7WZG3wDs+rKuiUG ld3w== Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.204.129.71 with SMTP id n7mr912834bks.91.1331730165702; Wed, 14 Mar 2012 06:02:45 -0700 (PDT) Sender: freemanrich@gmail.com Received: by 10.205.32.194 with HTTP; Wed, 14 Mar 2012 06:02:45 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <4F5FE66B.3030605@gentoo.org> References: <20120311022706.GA26296@linux1> <20120313084306.GC1197@waltdnes.org> <4F5FE66B.3030605@gentoo.org> Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2012 09:02:45 -0400 X-Google-Sender-Auth: GmD1LJx_ZE7F2wVrUGKTP7qaBe0 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: newsitem: unmasking udev-181 From: Rich Freeman To: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Archives-Salt: 6c67eb90-fe3b-4ac3-ba38-f6f7f7d421ae X-Archives-Hash: d133a29cfb63ac299910eae8705ce9da On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 8:29 PM, Joshua Kinard wrote: > > My contention is that I shouldn't need an initramfs loaded into my kernel= to > get my system into a minimally-usable state. =A0I've been running separat= e > /usr setups for 10+ years, and only now, such a setup breaks, hence my be= ef > with Fedora's assertion that such a setup is wrong. I was thinking about this and here is another way to think about it. Right now you can't boot a linux kernel without a whole bunch of c/asm code in linux. That code is necessary to do arch-specific setup, locate the root device, mount it, and run init. The new model is that you can't boot a linux kernel without a whole bunch of c/asm code in linux, and a bunch of scripts and userspace code in a blob (that can potentially be part of the kernel image). You could view this as a simple refactoring of code. Instead of all the boot logic being in c/asm which is hard to tweak, now some of it is written in bash and a bunch of userspace tools. All of this can just be viewed as part of the kernel - it can even be part of the same file if you want. Obviously this isn't a perfect analogy, as a bunch of userspace tools already existed but now require the extra glue code to work (mounting /usr). Once upon a time you didn't even need grub or lilo to boot - you could just stick the kernel at the start of your boot disk and the first 512 bytes of the kernel conveniently contained a boot sector. That code actually still exists but simply tells the user to bugger_off. So, you really could just view this as another step in the evolution of the linux boot process. After seeing some of the more exotic boot processes used in ARM/etc stuff like this just doesn't throw me for much of a loop. And, if you setup dracut/genkernel appropriately it really is just one extra step to make your system bootable. Rich