Package: initrd-tools
Version: 0.1.78
Severity: wishlist
Tags: patch
Debian now has NSFroot network booting with initrd support thanks to the
combination of initrd-tools and initrd-netboot-tools.
However this combination seems to work more by luck than design!
When booting a Linux kernel for NFSroot one needs to rdev the kernel
with device code major=0 minor=255 or pass the command line argument
root=/dev/nfs. The upshot of either of these is that the kernel
real-root-dev (/proc/sys/kernel/real-root-dev) ends up being "255".
initrd-tools:/sbin/init script calls the scipts in the initrd:/scripts/
directory inturn... this is where initrd-netboot-tools places scripts to
mount the NFSroot on /mnt. After that initrd-tools:/sbin/init contains
the stanza:
if [ $rootdev != 256 ]; then
mount_root
cd mnt
[ $DEVFS ] && mount -nt devfs devfs dev
pivot_root . initrd
fi
This stanza is run for the NFSroot case as rootdev=255.
By calling the mount_root function the get_device and mount_device
functions are in turn called. The mount device function than tries to
mount the block device major=0 minor=255 as if it were a normal block
device. This fails as one would expect and so initrd-tools:/sbin/init
continues on to run pivot_root and continue booting the NFSroot system.
What is the problem you may say... well I think that rather than
assuming that the mount of block device major=0 minor=255 will fail in a
way that is safe we should trap the rootdev=255 earlier and not allow
the mount command to be attempted. The following patch to
initrd-tools:/sbin/init performs this trap.
---8<---
--- init.orig 2005-05-03 11:13:32.000000000 +0100
+++ init 2005-05-03 11:14:19.000000000 +0100
@@ -418,7 +418,9 @@
cmdline=$(cat /proc/cmdline)
umount -n proc
if [ $rootdev != 256 ]; then
+ if [ $rootdev != 255 ]; then
mount_root
+ fi
cd mnt
[ $DEVFS ] && mount -nt devfs devfs dev
pivot_root . initrd
---8<---
Regards
Alex Owen
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (400, 'testing'), (300, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.4.27-1-686
Locale: LANG=en_GB, LC_CTYPE=en_GB (charmap=ISO-8859-1)
Versions of packages initrd-tools depends on:
ii coreutils [fileutils] 5.2.1-2 The GNU core utilities
ii cpio 2.5-1.2 GNU cpio -- a program to manage ar
ii cramfsprogs 1.1-6 Tools for CramFs (Compressed ROM F
ii dash 0.5.2-4 The Debian Almquist Shell
ii util-linux 2.12-10 Miscellaneous system utilities
-- no debconf information
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