On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 12:11:39AM +0100, J.A. Bezemer wrote: > > On Mon, 19 Dec 2011, Roger Leigh wrote: > > [..] > > > >Regarding the objections above, which are primarily concerned with the > >creation of a non-generic initramfs, how does this alternative suggestion > >sound: > > > >- The addition of usr= options analogous to the root= options which > > permit the bootloader to specify the /usr filesystem to mount. By > > default would do nothing, but grub could be updated to generate > > such options on systems with a separate /usr. > > Nonsense, should come from /etc/fstab.
Of course. In case it wasn't implicit from the above, this information would necessarily need to be taken from /etc/fstab by update-grub or its equivalent for other bootloaders when generating grub.cfg (or its equivalent). They presumably already do the same for / (or look at the current rootfs), so it's simply copying existing practice for the rootfs. > >- We could also add an additional etc= option with the same semantics. > > Something like this would be necessary to support separately mounted > /etc, but I see that as a completely separate discussion. Also note > that you would need to patch _all_ existing bootloaders for _all_ > arches to automatically include that option in any generated config > file (namely by parsing the one&only main config location which is > /etc/fstab or possibly /etc/fstab.d). Agreed. In order to guarantee that /usr is always available, we will need to support this for all bootloaders. As an aside, this support would only be required for situations where a separate /usr is used /and/ stuff on /usr is required for early boot. Support for minor tools/platforms might not be required since the other solution is simple: keep /usr on the rootfs if you need those guarantees. Either way, having support in the initramfs is a prerequisite for updating the bootloaders. > Related issue: how to specify desired fsck options (such as FSCKFIX) > for / and /etc, while /etc is not yet mounted. I would presume that this would be unchanged. By the time fsck is run, you'll have / and additionally /etc and/or /usr mounted, so keeping it on /etc will be just fine. > Next, you'll be arguing that /etc/fstab should be moved to /. And > /etc/default/rcS too. No. I'm simply proposing a way to make additional guarantees about the availability of /usr in early boot. Nothing else is changed except for when /usr is mounted. Regards, Roger -- .''`. Roger Leigh : :' : Debian GNU/Linux http://people.debian.org/~rleigh/ `. `' Printing on GNU/Linux? http://gutenprint.sourceforge.net/ `- GPG Public Key: 0x25BFB848 Please GPG sign your mail. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20111220001514.gd5...@codelibre.net
