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Rich Freeman posted on Sat, 14 Jul 2012 19:57:41 -0400 as excerpted: |
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> On Sat, Jul 14, 2012 at 7:38 PM, Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@×××.net> wrote: |
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>> BTW, any "gentooish" documentation out there on rootfs as tmpfs, with |
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>> /etc and the like mounted on top of it, operationally ro, rw remounted |
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>> for updates? |
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>> |
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>> That's obviously going to take an initr*, which I've never really |
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>> understood to the point I'm comfortable with my ability to recover from |
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>> problems so I've not run one since my Mandrake era, but that's a status |
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>> that can change, and what with the /usr move and some computer problems |
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>> I just finished dealing with, I've been thinking about the possibility |
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>> lately. So if there's some good docs on the topic someone can point me |
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>> at, I'd be grateful. =:^) |
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> |
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> I doubt anybody has tried it, so you'll have to experiment. |
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"Anybody" /anybody/, or "anybody" on gentoo? FWIW, there are people |
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running it in general (IIRC much of the discussion was on Debian, some on |
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Fedora/RH), but I didn't see anything out there written from a gentoo |
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perspective. Gentoo-based docs/perspective does help, as one isn't |
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constantly having to translate binary-based assumptions into "gentooese", |
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but there's enough out there in general that a suitably determined/ |
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motivated person at the usual experienced gentoo user level should be |
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able to do it, without having to be an /extreme/ wizard. But so far I've |
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not been /that/ motivated, and if there was gentoo docs available, it |
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would bring the barriers down far enough that I likely /would/ then have |
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the (now lower) required motivation/determination. |
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|
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Just looking for that shortcut, is all. =:^) |
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> I imagine you could do it with a dracut module. There is already a |
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> module that will parse a pre-boot fstab (/etc/fstab.sys). The trick is |
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> that you need to create the root filesystem and the mountpoints within |
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> it first. The trick will be how dracut handles not specifying a root |
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> filesystem. |
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|
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While I do know dracut is an initr* helper, you just made me quite aware |
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of just how much research I'd have to do on the topic. =:^\ I wasn't |
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aware dracut even /had/ modules, while you're referring to them with the |
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ease of familiarity... |
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|
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> However, if anything I think the future trend will be towards having |
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> everything back on the root filesystem, since with btrfs you can set |
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> quotas on subvolumes and have a lot more flexibility in general, which |
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> you start to lose if you chop up your disks. However, I guess you could |
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> still have one big btrfs filesystem and mount individual subvolumes out |
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> of it onto your root. I'm not really sure what that gets you. Having |
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> the root itself be a subvolume does have benefits, since you can then |
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> snapshot it and easily boot back off a snapshot if something goes wrong. |
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|
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The big problem with btrfs subvolumes from my perspective is that they're |
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still all on a single primary filesystem, and if that filesystem develops |
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problems... all your eggs/data are in one big basket, good luck if the |
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bottom drops out of it! |
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|
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One lesson I've had drilled into my head repeatedly over now two decades |
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of computer experience... don't put all your data in one basket! It's a |
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personal policy that's saved my @$$ more than a few times over the years. |
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Even with raid, when I first setup md/raid, I set it up as a nice big |
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(partitioned) raid, with a second (similarly partitioned) raid as a |
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backup. With triple-digits gigs of data (this was pre-terabyte-drive |
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era), a system-crash related re-add and resync would take /hours/. |
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So when I rebuilt the setup, I created over a dozen (including working |
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and backup copies of many of them) individual raids, each in its own set |
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of partitions on the physical devices, some raids of which were further |
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partitioned, some not, but only the media raid (and its backup) were |
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anything like 100 gigs, and with many of even the working raids (plus all |
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backups) not even activated for normal operation unless I was actually |
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working on whatever data was on that raid, and in general even most of |
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the the assembled raids with rw mounting not actively writing at the time |
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of a crash, re-add and resync tended to be seconds or minutes, not hours. |
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|
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So I'm about as strong a partitioning-policy advocate as you'll get, tho |
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I do keep everything that the pm installs, along with the installation |
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database (so /etc, /usr, /var, but not for instance /var/log or /usr/src, |
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which are mountpoints), on the same (currently) rootfs of 8-ish gigs, |
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with a backup root partition (actually two of them now) that I can point |
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the kernel at from grub, if the working rootfs breaks for some reason. |
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So the separate /usr/ thing hasn't affected me at all, because /usr/ is |
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on rootfs. |
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|
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But as I said I had some computer hardware issues recently, and they made |
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me aware of just how nice it'd be to have that rootfs mounted read-only |
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for normal operation -- no fsck/log-replay needed on read-only-at-time-of- |
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crash mounts! =:^) |
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|
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So I'm pondering just how hard it would be... |
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|
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-- |
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Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. |
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"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- |
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and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman |