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On Tue, 2011-03-22 at 19:15 +0000, Duncan wrote: |
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> I'm absolutely with you on that. If you don't need an initr*, it |
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> definitely makes the whole thing simpler to avoid it (as I too have done). |
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I have an initrd on our firewall/fileserver here at the SOHO since I'm |
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I'm loading the root fs from a RAID-supported, EVMS drive. I did this |
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as a kind of proof of concept to learn how to do it, but at one point a |
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kernel upgrade forced me to rebuild the initrd manually with a newer |
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glibc. It was a strange problem, and a lot of work to fix. If I could |
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diagnose and fix _that_ I reckon I can quit whining and fix the |
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(probably relatively easy) one with my desktop boot. |
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It's a pity that EVMS is an orphaned project, or was the last time I |
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checked. IBM dropped it. It was and is a pretty slick system. |
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Ubuntu uses an initrd in all their stuff. I believe it's involved in |
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the display of their boot graphic and such. They've achieved _very_ |
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fast boot times, though, and the loaded system is disk-based. I know a |
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lot of Gentoo people look down on Ubuntu, but every distribution I've |
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ever worked with has its advantages and disadvantages. Open Source is |
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about choice :-) |
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> Panicking is certainly understandable, particularly coming at an already |
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> busy time of year. But that's behind us now. And simply having no time |
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> to deal with it for a few days is something I'm sure we all deal with, |
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> especially when there ends up a social crisis to deal with too. Sometimes |
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> it's all just too much and something has to give. When that's finally |
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> realized and done... it's like venting steam from an overheated nuclear |
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> reactor (apropos comparison ATM, if I do say so =:^), it might mean a |
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> slightly elevated immediate issue, but tends to deescalate the entire |
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> situation. |
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I'm going to nominate Jorge for sainthood! |
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> Meanwhile, now we know the fork in the path to take. Without an initr*, |
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> the fact that you get even a limited userspace (not just a kernel panic) |
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> means that the kernel has the necessary drivers to get to and do the |
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> initial load of the rootfs. The problem must be beyond that, in the |
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> userspace config, initscripts or binaries. |
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This is probably close to the point. Still working on our greenhouse, |
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but soon I'll get the time to get back on the case with this problem. |
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> At this point I'd guess something like the udev/kernel-config-deprecated- |
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> sysfs issue someone else mentioned. |
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Excellent shot, Duncan. I'll check it. I won't be using the 2.6.29 |
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kernel again, as per Roman's suggestion, but 2.6.36 instead. |
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-- |
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Lindsay Haisley | "Everything works if you let it" |
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FMP Computer Services | (The Roadie) |
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512-259-1190 | |
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http://www.fmp.com | |
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