Re: [gentoo-user] /dev/sda* missing at boot

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

On Sun, 11 Sep 2011 13:16:48 +1000
Paul Colquhoun <paulcol@andor.dropbear.id.au> wrote:

> I've had a look at the stuff at those links, and some of what they
> link to in turn, and had a bit of a think about it.
> 
> Looking at "initramfs" as a modern Linux replacement for the
> "bootable / partition" of traditional Unix systems does make some
> sense, even though I think it could be made simpler.
> 
> Fot those opposed to initramfs, would you also object to /boot being
>   1) a manditory seperate partition
>   2) required to be ext2 (or one of a *very* short list)
>   3) having /boot/{bin,sbin,lib} containing local copies of the
> absolute minimum boot requirements (i.e. initramfs in a real fs)

For my part, I don't object to any of those. The Unix boot system is
generic enough that one should be able to build whatever one wants.
Only a very few things are required:

the kernel must be accessible to the bootloader
the root partition must be accessible to the kernel
init must be available early

everything else is optional

How the distro (or user) makes this happen should be up to them, not up
to udev. I understand that udev opens up all manner of
future possibilities and these could be very useful. But I do object
to a single package breaking all the foundation assumptions, especially
when the package is now being used in ways not originally envisaged.

udev is a dynamic device node controller. It is not a hotplug framework
and should not be dictating how the rest of the stack must be arranged.

-- 
Alan McKinnnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com