On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 10:29 AM, Rob OpenSuSE <rob.opensuse.linux@googlemail.com> wrote:
2009/1/15 Matt Sealey <matt@genesi-usa.com>:
On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 8:53 AM, Rob OpenSuSE <rob.opensuse.linux@googlemail.com> wrote:
The problem that seems to be overlooked is that, SquashFS is only just making it into the mainline kernel. initrd's are from kernel hacker point of you, non-broken and functioning perfectly satisfactorily using the cpio/gzip format.
Squashfs support has been built in and built from every kernel package I've seen on SUSE since somewhere around version 8.
It is not like it is not ready on peoples' systems *right now*. Only vanilla kernels won't see it, which may cause some problem for people who love to use vanilla kernels, but that gets fixed when squashfs is mainlined.
The linux kernel team "kernel hacker" use all kinds of distro's not just SuSE, and as Greg KH said
This is an openSUSE mailing list. I'm not talking about all kinds of other distros. Although if I was I'd note that a bunch of them do use squashfs for initrd (and root filesystems unioned under hard disks) It's only Fedora and Debian which don't but this is most of a factor of "we've been using mkinitramfs since 1997 anyway, and didn't want to change it to a system which needed a kernel patch". Time has changed! No patch required for modern kernels. And the current kernels are already patched anyway. If you loop mount a squashfs kernel, too, you don't need any special tools to extract files from it - this is how the LiveCD installers work. You just copy the files to the target.
So the questions he asked, wanting numbers matter, as does that objection, the advocates of change need to be provide evidence.
There are end user benefits to mountable initrd's, and would have been a much better workround for one bug, than what I actually had to do.
I don't think mountable initrds is the point (there are very few situations where you need to mount it), it's the CONSOLIDATION of cpio/squashfs as currently used in initrd/roots on the LiveCDs and potentially the DVD images for the standard installation, to use a single build system and a single (loop mountable) filesystem which offers several benefits. You're simply not paying attention to what is going on in the discussion. I don't know why you are talking about "sysadmin problems", because you never qualified it. Or mountable initrds (I was talking about the fact that the installer ALREADY uses squashfs files INSIDE cpio initrds). They aren't the plus points I'm trying to push here. -- Matt Sealey <matt@genesi-usa.com> Genesi, Manager, Developer Relations -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kernel+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-kernel+help@opensuse.org