Re: [gentoo-dev] Opinion against /usr merge

[Michael Mol]

On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 3:25 PM, Canek Peláez Valdés <caneko@×××××.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 2:18 PM, Michael Mol <mikemol@×××××.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 3:05 PM, Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote:
>>> On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 2:53 PM, Michael Mol <mikemol@×××××.com> wrote:
>>>> AFAIK, neither genkernel nor dracut were expected to get tied to the
>>>> Gentoo update process. Has that changed?
>>>
>>> We don't even update kernels as part of the regular update process,
>>> let alone initramfs systems.
>>>
>>> In general you update them together.
>>>
>>> The only issue I could see is if problems arise if you have a
>>> different version of udev in your initramfs than on your system.  I
>>> don't know if that actually causes problems.  For the most part after
>>> the system is booted the initramfs is done its job.
>>
>> The most widely touted benefit I've heard for initramfs is its
>> capability to ease system recovery in case, e.g. a critical filesystem
>> refuses to mount. With recovery roles come recovery tools, which
>> quickly extends network-aware tools and a security attack surface.
>
> The real benefit is that it allows you to mount any partition, if the
> tools to mount it live in the same partition.

Certainly that's a benefit.

> Recovering tools can be
> put in the initramfs, but I don't think nobody actually thinks that
> this is the "most widely touted benefit". Again, citation please.

I'm sorry, but I'm not going to grep through almost a decade of IRC
logs to find every discussion where someone says 'well, just put $tool
in your {initramfs,initrd}.' It's definitely something I've seen a
number of times. I *know* I've heard the line more than once in LUG
meetings, from people who hand-build theirs, but given that's a
local-to-me thing, you probably wouldn't know most of them by name.

>
>> Hence why I tend to feel that if an initramfs is going to become the
>> go-to solution for bootstrapping userland, it's important to consider
>> the difficulties of keeping the packed tools up-to-date; it's not just
>> a bootstrap tool, it's also the first recovery option a sysadmin
>> faces.
>
> If you keep your initramfs synchronized (which is easily done with
> dracut, for example), that problem goes away.

Again, dracut isn't stable, genkernel isn't part of any normal routine
system update, and I hold the same trepidations expressed by Rich
about limitations on circumstances where that's even appropriate.
-- 
:wq