Feature changed by: Hannes Reinecke (hreinecke) Feature #310491, revision 12 Title: Add dracut to openSUSE openSUSE-11.4: Evaluation Priority Requester: Important Requested by: Luis Medinas (lmedinas) Developer: (Novell) Description: Dracut is suppose to be a replacement for the old initrd tools like mkinitrd. From the project description, dracut is an initramfs infrastructure. Unlike previous initramfs systems, Dracut aims to have as little as possible hard-coded into the initramfs. It contains specific configuration files for init drivers and includes plymouth support. Dracut advantage seems to be a modern replacement to generate initrd and it's suppose to be easy to use/manage. See http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/dracut/wiki for details. Discussion: #1: Jan Engelhardt (jengelh) (2010-09-19 17:02:28) NEGATIVE. openSUSE has replaced its mkinitrd by a new implementation in 11.2 that is equally flexible, if not even better than dracut. It certainly is easier to jump into how it's supposed to work. With the dracut as shipped on F-13 I can't really say the same. If you ever ran `mkinitrd -h` on SUSE... well just try finding the equivalents in dracut. You don't. #6: Andreas Jaeger (a_jaeger) (2010-11-03 13:21:48) (reply to #1) From the discussions at the openSUSE conference, I see interest in doing this. Let's talk together and decide what's best. IMO working on a common solution has its benefits - and if there are usability problems, we should be able to improve dracut. #7: Luis Medinas (lmedinas) (2010-11-03 14:47:43) (reply to #6) I worked a few weeks ago on adding *SUSE support on dracut but looks like Harold finished the job for me. I guess having both on Factory doesn't hurt and on the release cycle we should decide what fits best for the job. Now i think we should clean Harold spec and SR to Factory. #2: Nelson Marques (ketheriel) (2010-09-27 01:50:15) If Plymouth will move in, most likely dracut would help since it supports plymouth and that can do a lot on soften plymouth introduction to many users. just a random thought... #3: Jan Engelhardt (jengelh) (2010-10-03 02:10:18) (reply to #2) It's not like smkinitrd would not be able to support plymouth. #4: Rémy Marquis (spyhawk) (2010-11-03 13:10:07) A similar entry has been opened here: https://features.opensuse.org/310784# (https://features.opensuse.org/310784#) #5: Andreas Jaeger (a_jaeger) (2010-11-03 13:16:55) (reply to #4) I did not find this entry, so let me mark 310784 as duplicate now. + #8: Hannes Reinecke (hreinecke) (2010-11-05 08:27:29) + Yes, I do agree, mkinitrd might be easier to use. + And the paragraph about plymouth is just pointless, as I'm not aware + we're using plymouth anywhere in the distro. + However, I (as one of the main authors of mkinitrd) am in favour of + this feature. The main problem with mkinitrd is that we (as in the + openSUSE community) failed to get any public traction here. The number + of external commits to mkinitrd are zero. Whereas dracut has an active + mailinglist and numerous contributors. It might be inferior in some + places, but that doesn't mean we cannot improve it. And the other big + advantage here is that we will be picking up any new features + automatically, without us having to re-implement it in mkinitrd. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/310491