On Mon, 8 Dec 2008, David Mathog wrote:
The straw that broke this particular camel's back was a decision (presumably by Mandriva, maybe by RedHat) to change in the kernel config BLK_DEV_IDE and BLK_DEV_IDEDISK from y to m, similarly, DEV_AMD74XX (and etc.) also changed from y to m.
You were just lucky previously that Red Hat engineers found a good idea to put those into the kernel. How would you have felt if you were booting an all-SCSI (to stay with old tech) system, where the IDE drivers present in the kernel would not have helped ?
As a consequence, they went from a system where a simple initrd would boot anywhere (as all the needed drivers were built into the kernel) to one where a much more complex initrd ended up being highly machine specific.
Sorry to disapoint you... the initrd was always machine specific. All Red Hat docs specify that after modifying /etc/modules.conf or /etc/modprobe.conf the initrd should be regenerated via mkinitrd so that the next boot will use the proper drivers/settings.
As to the complexity of initrd: my current method choice for setting up compute nodes is to sync a root FS from the master server during the initrd, which means that I have to build an initrd. As I already know what hardware components are in the node (which is also the case f.e. when I run mkinitrd), it's easy to just add these modules to the initrd archive and insert a few 'insmod module.ko' in the proper order in the init script.
Having a monolithic kernel that "just works" on a large variety of hardware means answering "y" to most drivers; the kernel itself would then grow as large as the "immense initrd" that you mention. How would that be better ?
-- Bogdan Costescu IWR, University of Heidelberg, INF 368, D-69120 Heidelberg, Germany Phone: +49 6221 54 8240, Fax: +49 6221 54 8850 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, [email protected] To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
