Greg Freemyer wrote:
Linda on the other hand apparently has her servers setup not to use initrd at all. Thus a configuration she has used for years is no longer supported.
The reason it is no longer supported is that they didn't know how to do it with systemd. As for the other reasons besides systemd to merge, I've yet to read any that tell why the following would not have worked equally well yet caused no backwards incompatibility: Leave binaries needed to boot to single-user (1) on root. Put libraries as needed to support 1 on root. Put symlinks (if desired? why? PATH not working?) in /usr/bin, /usr/sbin. As it is now, SuSE has violated a basic sys-admin no-no. Never rely on or install links from a mounted fs to another, UNLESS that 'fs' has to be mounted in order for the 1st to be mounted -- i.e. /usr-> / would be ok, because you can't mount the 'usr' fs without the root-dir "/" to mount it on. But nearly all sys admins would heavily frown on "forward links" (links from a fs to a fs that may not be mounted) as bad practice. Doing the latter introduces 2 points of failure -- rootfs and usr. Putting all of usr on /rootfs nearly does the same thing, as the reason for a small root was to have less on it needing updating.
I'll just use initrd with my openSUSE systems.
If you don't mind closing your eyes at init time, that's great. I look at nearly every boot to see what's changed (especially when a install a new kernel). Did any verify booting to a serial console? That's what drove me to do my own boot because I couldn't easily debug anything on the initrd. It would turn off my console display but never come up on the serial line. When I did get the initrd method to work -- it still turned off the display until the first 'login' prompt -- which I think means it never switched to the graphics display -- likely because, at the time, my card wasn't supported -- now it is, but it defaults to half a screen of text at the top. The alternative, which I have used is 132x50 BIOS VGA mode, w/scroll done in HW, not in a SW frame buffer. I.e. -- all this wasn't just ONLY about separate / and /usr, but also supporting serial consoles and native HW -- which I've been trying to keep supported, w/o much support. So I just have to wait until the Corporate issue comes out and they deal with not booting with only a desktop in mind (all of the arguments involving merging /usr and / involved a desktop -- as they involved loading 'X' which lives in /usr. Also, it's not just about / and /usr, but also /usr/share --- at least a few current booting progs make use of it, and the same arguments used for /usr can be used for /usr/share (where do you load your fonts from?) My /usr/share is a 3rd partition that is located on a 4th, /home, which requires lvm & udev... -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org