>>>>> On Tue, 27 Mar 2012, Sven Vermeulen wrote:

>> 3. New udev and separate /usr partition (30 minutes)
>> 
>> See [4]: "Decide on whether a separate /usr is still a supported
>> configuration. If it is, newer udev can not be stabled and
>> alternatives should be investigated. If it isn't, a lot of
>> documentation will have to be updated. (And an alternative should
>> likely still be provided.)"

> Is it truely that much documentation? The handbook doesn't suggest
> separate /usr anymore (all example partitions use a single / file
> system), and the necessary changes to setup an initramfs are being
> prepared (cfr bugs related to bug #407959).

I've got a somewhat different impression, namely that it's still a
long way to go until the documentation will be sufficiently complete.

When updating my own systems (separate /usr partition, ext3 or ext4,
otherwise nothing special), I wasn't so happy with the status of the
documentation for the alternatives that are being discussed:

- dracut: I failed to find any documentation in our handbooks.
  Anyway, dracut looks like overkill for my simple usage case.

- genkernel: Easy to use, but it doesn't include e2fsck with the
  generated initramfs. Am I supposed to mount /usr without running
  fsck on it first? Once the partition is mounted (even read-only),
  e2fsck will refuse to run on it (so it also cannot be checked later
  in the boot sequence). Again, I was unable to find any documentation
  that would answer these questions.

So finally I ended up building my own initramfs, using information
from the wiki and from forums.

> We might want to provide an initramfs-guide to explain the concepts
> and the various methods for generating one (as well as debugging),
> but that too might not be the most difficult thing out there
> (there's still time for that, no)?

IMHO this has to be done before >=udev-180 can be stabilised.

Ulrich