On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 22:01:28 +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote:

> > Your package manager only knows about the copy in the original
> > location.  
> 
> So?  The same applies to a copy in the initramfs.

No it does not. the initramfs is built using the versions installed on
your system, and unloaded as soon as root is switched to /. At no time
are two different versions available in your path.

> > When you update you'll have multiple versions of the same program or
> > library in your path.  
> 
> Well, with the manual/script copying which needs doing either for /sbin
> or initramfs, that will be several copies of a program, not several
> versions.

Multiple copies of the same version is inefficient, multiple versions is
potentially disastrous.

> I'm still trying to see the reason why an /sbin with the same contents
> as a putative initramfs won't work.

You seem to be trying very hard to ignore the point that the initramfs
does not need to contain as much as /usr or even /. It only needs to
contain the files required to mount / and /usr. this can be as few as 2,
busybox and the init script. Even with encrypted filesystems on LVM
volumes running on RAID, this box's initramfs contains only 5 files.

% grep file /usr/src/init.cfg
file /bin/busybox /bin/busybox 755 0 0
file /sbin/lvm.static /sbin/lvm.static 755 0 0
file /sbin/mdadm /sbin/mdadm 755 0 0
file /sbin/cryptsetup /sbin/cryptsetup 755 0 0
file /init /usr/src/init.sh 755 0 0


-- 
Neil Bothwick

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