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 <gentoo-user+bounces-136889-garchives=archives.gentoo.org@lists.gentoo.org>) id 1SCtUP-00087t-Cc for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:04:41 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 10902E0D61; Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:04:24 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail.muc.de (colin.muc.de [193.149.48.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4EE50E0B43 for <gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org>; Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:02:49 +0000 (UTC) Received: (qmail 8271 invoked by uid 3782); 28 Mar 2012 14:02:48 -0000 Received: from acm.muc.de (pD951AEB9.dip.t-dialin.net [217.81.174.185]) by colin.muc.de (tmda-ofmipd) with ESMTP; Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:02:47 +0200 Received: (qmail 3634 invoked by uid 1000); 28 Mar 2012 14:01:32 -0000 Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:01:32 +0000 To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: After /usr conflation: why not copy booting software to /sbin rather than initramfs? Message-ID: <20120328140132.GA3546@acm.acm> References: <20120327133728.GA3754@acm.acm> <01c301cd0c22$2fac1300$8f043900$@kutulu.org> <20120327142646.GB3754@acm.acm> <20120327154620.21440f87@digimed.co.uk> <86iphq0vza.fsf@jane.chrekh.se> <003e01cd0c53$a2e99b90$e8bcd2b0$@kutulu.org> <20120327212422.GA3437@acm.acm> <20120327234819.45111444@khamul.example.com> <20120327223544.GC3437@acm.acm> <20120328005520.140b8fd6@khamul.example.com> Precedence: bulk List-Post: <mailto:gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org> List-Help: <mailto:gentoo-user+help@lists.gentoo.org> List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:gentoo-user+unsubscribe@lists.gentoo.org> List-Subscribe: <mailto:gentoo-user+subscribe@lists.gentoo.org> List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail <gentoo-user.gentoo.org> X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20120328005520.140b8fd6@khamul.example.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) X-Delivery-Agent: TMDA/1.1.12 (Macallan) From: Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> X-Primary-Address: acm@muc.de X-Archives-Salt: 78d6d619-3690-421c-a415-e2437e4d7e60 X-Archives-Hash: 6daad4c1aa089553fd860adb8be253bc On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 12:55:20AM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: > > On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 11:48:19PM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: > > > On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 21:24:22 +0000 > > > Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote: > > > > That is precisely what the question was NOT about. The idea was > > > > to copy (not move) booting software to /sbin instead of an > > > > initramfs - the exact same programs, modulo noise - to have the > > > > SW in /sbin necessary to mount /usr. > > > Two words: > > > shared libraries > > > Copying binaries is not enough. You have to find and copy every > > > shared library those binaries use. Plus all the data and other > > > files they might need. > > > This is non-trivial. > > <silently screams>. It's equally non-trivial for initramfs, yet > > nobody seems to be raising this objection for that. > > Why is nobody else on this thread willing to take up its main point, > > the exact equivalence between the known, ugly, initramfs solution and > > the as yet half-baked idea of putting the same binaries into /sbin? > Read my other mail and pay attention to the difference between > transient and persistent. In my proposed solution, the executables in /sbin would only exist until /usr had been mounted and the runtime PATH set up. After the unification of /usr, /sbin won't even exist (apart from in schemes like mine). > initramfs is an elegant engineering solution (albeit over-engineered > for our specific case of being Gentoo users). Maybe, maybe not. It couples the various bits of booting more tighly together. I look at Allan Gottlieb's bug "WARNING latest lvm2 breaks systems with older udev", and note that he recovered, essentially, by mounting non-/ partitions by hand and going back to an old lvm2 version. I had a similar problem when I was first trying out Walter's mdev solution, which I also recovered by mounting by hand. I look forward with foreboding to the time when such recovery will not be possible. Only a legacy Gentoo system or a recovery CD will help then. I think it highly probable that "can't boot" bugs will continue to happen occasionally. I'd like to carry on having a bootable skeleton system for when this happens. > Your questions are about an extremely ill-advised action that has no > sound basis. It copies stuff around to make one very specific thing > work but with zero consideration for what it will do to everything > else. That is bad, bad engineering. I don't think that's a fair summary. > If you want all this stuff in /, then do it correctly and modify the > ebuilds to put the originals there (and troubleshoot the fallout from > other faulty hard-coded stuffs). This is a lot of work, but it is sound. I doubt that would work, for the reasons you give. I feel I've been needlessly slammed, all for articulating an interesting idea. > -- > Alan McKinnnon > alan.mckinnon@gmail.com -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).