On Thu, 2012-11-15 at 10:26 +0100, Bernhard Voelker wrote:
On 11/15/2012 09:17 AM, Linda Walsh wrote:
Moreover, what is there on initrd that you can't put in root?
Find out yourself:
$ mkdir /tmp/initrd $ cd /tmp/initrd $ gzip -dc - < /boot/initrd | cpio -i $ find . -ls [...]
It's a question of timing, e.g. how do you want to do an fsck of the root file system when you have it already mounted?
One could have the initrd components in a separate partition, which would contain the only copy of these, so that whatever the current kernel has is available at boot. This disadvantage of that is (1) it takes a partition (one per kernel) (2) you then have to deal with the size of that partition should more space be needed. The initrd puts that info in a file so that (1) there can easily be many of them and (2) the space required is easier to manage. Also, I use KIWI to make diskless openSUSE images that are mounted over the network via PXE. If the initrd was a partition, this would surely be much more complicated. Getting the image via tftp (which is how it is gotten) is 'simple'. Otherwise the loader would need to have, say AoE (ATA over Ethernet) at this early stage. Yours sincerely, Roger Oberholtzer Ramböll RST / Systems Office: Int +46 10-615 60 20 Mobile: Int +46 70-815 1696 roger.oberholtzer@ramboll.se ________________________________________ Ramböll Sverige AB Krukmakargatan 21 P.O. Box 17009 SE-104 62 Stockholm, Sweden www.rambollrst.se -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org