Re: /boot or not /boot (was Re: [gentoo-user] can't stop the panic on eeepc)

[Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>]

On Saturday 09 May 2009 15:13:35 Stroller wrote:
> On 9 May 2009, at 13:41, Dirk Heinrichs wrote:
> > Am Samstag, 9. Mai 2009 12:20:46 schrieb Stroller:
> >>> This is Gentoo, so you as the user define the rules. And for _me_,
> >>> it definitely
> >>> _is_ a rule.
> >>
> >> Could you possibly explain why, please?
> >
> > Because it eliminates the need for an initramfs (which I used until
> > a few
> > weeks ago), ...
>
> I believed you could manage without either a /boot volume or an
> initramfs.
>
> Perhaps I'm misunderstanding.

I think you are. The need for an initramfs has nothing to do with whether 
/boot is a separate partition of not. grub is equally happy loading the kernel 
from (hd0,0)/vmlinux or (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinux

It has everything to do with making necessary kernel modules available at boot 
time. The kernel cannot load block device and filesystem drivers that are on 
the device it needs to read (chicken and egg). However, it can get them from a 
ram disk which is all an initrd is and which grub supports.

Simply compile the drivers into the kernel.

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com