On Sat, Jun 05, 2021 at 12:46:13PM -0500, Martin McCormick wrote: > I have a plan but I need some more information. Is there any > personalization done by the boot setup process?
Yes. One of the GRUB's tasks is to supply kernel which is about to boot with root=... cmdline parameter. Root filesystem UUID can be used for this. > Do our UUID's or any other specific information pertaining to the > installation make it in to the initrd files? In Debian - no, unless you include it there for some bizarre reason. It's not needed for the things initrd usually does. > If that is so, then two computers using the same > processor type should be able to use copies of the same initrd files > and the only thing that is personalized on an individual computer > is all the grub configuration in which the UUID's of at least / > and /swap partitions are sprinkled throughout grub.cfg and > /etc/default/grub. It's not the CPU difference you need to worry about. Different SATA controllers, video cards, NICs - i.e. what they call periphery devices - those things require different kernel modules that should be (or could be) used in early boot process, and therefore need to be included in initrd. Luckily, Debian uses initramfs-tools for building initrd, and initramfs-tools should build initrd with everything and a kitchen sink included (MODULES=most in /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf). > One should be able to write a program to get the > appropriate UUID's out of fstab on the working system > and translate them in to corresponding UUID's for the system on > the operating table. Er, they've invented filesystem labels for exactly this many decades ago. > As an aside, one ought to be able to do something like > this. It makes life a lot simpler. Both systems are using the > same kernel and versions of the same processor the only real > differences are the UUID's. Perfectly possible for the last 15 years or so. Assuming Debian and MODULES=most, of course. Reco
