Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Let's redesign the entire filesystem!

[Matthew Summers]

On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 10:22 AM, Greg KH <gregkh@g.o> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 03:08:27PM +0000, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
>> On Wed, 14 Mar 2012 08:04:31 -0700
>> Greg KH <gregkh@g.o> wrote:
>> > Not always, no, it isn't obvious that something didn't start up
>> > correctly, or that it didn't fully load properly.  Some programs later
>> > on recover and handle things better.
>>
>> So why not work on fixing those things, since they're clearly symptoms
>> of a larger "oops, we have too much coupling" problem, instead of
>> forcing a workaround onto large numbers of users?
>
> I seriously doubt there are a "large number" of users here that have
> this issue.
>

The majority of users should not encounter any difficulty due to this
issue. Those that are doing special things that require careful
mounting, etc should be sufficiently competent to deal with this issue
without any trouble at all, especially given the various solution
paths.

> And even if there is, again, there is a simple solution that Gentoo
> provides for this issue, see the earlier initrd solution that we support
> today.
>

Gentoo provides a solution with genkernel, dracut provides a solution,
even the linux kernel itself provides a solution (in my view the
easiest solution at that).

> I'll go back to lurking now, and getting stuff done, like everyone else
> on this thread should be doing, instead of complaining (this is -dev,
> not -users...)
>
> greg k-h
>

Oh, please Greg, do continue to stay engaged, I enjoy your perspective
very much.

I just wanted to drop this simple fact in there. This has been coming
for several years now AND the linux kernel has been using an initramfs
for every boot, every time for a long time now, all 2.6 and up as I
understand it. If the initramfs is empty, well the kernel is smart
enough to fall back on "legacy" boot process.

If you care to read about it, its all contained locally if your kernel
source in the file
linux/Documentation/filesystems/ramfs-rootfs-initramfs.txt

Its a great read, sure to entertain and enlighten. It saved my bacon a
few times when mdadm switched to the new metadata format. Once I began
to learn about what the initramfs made possible, entire new worlds of
possibility appeared (and I was not even on drugs!).

It's actually something of a surprise to me that there are people
upset about this change, since it cleans things up a bit while also
giving people that want and/or need it, a great deal of power and
control over the boot process that was not nearly as easy before.

I do believe Gentoo, as a community/volunteer-run and super-power-user
distribution, should be careful, a bit wary, and seriously consider
the decisions made by our corporate colleagues (we do have the mandate
to maintain our independence). However, simply because RHEL, SUSE, etc
are corporation controlled distributions does not mean they are bad or
trying to control/ruin the rest of the distros.

Anyway, I merely thought I would place my commentary on this situation
here for posterity. Since I have an opinion, I thought I would share
it for better or worse.

-- 
Matthew W. Summers
Gentoo Foundation Inc.