Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Michael Mol <mikemol@×××××.com>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] After /usr conflation: why not copy booting software to /sbin rather than initramfs?
Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:20:42
Message-Id: CA+czFiB2UnMzoS6vbcBmftjiyMeZ6Kxeyur=3VupnYRboKWn=g@mail.gmail.com
In Reply to: RE: [gentoo-user] After /usr conflation: why not copy booting software to /sbin rather than initramfs? by Mike Edenfield
1 On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 10:02 AM, Mike Edenfield <kutulu@××××××.org> wrote:
2
3 [snip]
4
5 > As you move more and more software off of /usr into / you start to realize
6 > that the idea of "tiny partition that contains just what I need to boot and
7 > mount /usr" is becoming "not so tiny" anymore. The distinction between what
8 > is "boot" software versus "user" software gets less clear. Then it's just
9 > question of how far you take this process before you reach your personal
10 > threshold of questioning why you have two partitions at all. Whether you
11 > reach that point or not depends on how complex your boot process is, what
12 > you actually need running to boot, and how personally invested in a split
13 > /usr you happen to be :)
14
15 This extends directly by analogy to having binaries on /usr mounted on
16 anything other than plain disk. Say you wanted to have / on LVM on
17 RAID6. Now you don't have any choice but to move stuff from /usr/* to
18 your initramfs, since the kernel isn't even going to automount your
19 RAID for you if you're not using the 0.9 metadata format, and you've
20 still got to cope with LVM.
21
22 As you say, the boundary between user software and boot software grows
23 less and less clear, and your *initramfs* grows bigger and bigger. How
24 long will there remain *any point* to LVM or software RAID, once you
25 have to preload the bulk of your operating system into RAM before you
26 can access their contents? One shouldn't need an entire operating
27 system preloaded into RAM before being able to access the current
28 versions of anything.
29
30 The *real* fun is going to start once you get daemons which happen to
31 need to be launched while you're still in your initramfs stage, and
32 then you need to restart those daemons as part of an update later in
33 the system's uptime. That's going to be a fun one to solve.
34
35 --
36 :wq