Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: nunojsilva@ist.utl.pt (Nuno J. Silva)
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: [gentoo-user] Re: Anyone switched to eudev yet?
Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2012 18:05:40
Message-Id: 8738yw7ido.fsf@ist.utl.pt
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Anyone switched to eudev yet? by Michael Mol
1 On 2012-12-23, Michael Mol wrote:
2
3 > On Dec 23, 2012 12:46 PM, "Nuno J. Silva" <nunojsilva@×××××××.pt> wrote:
4 >>
5 >> On 2012-12-23, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
6 >>
7 >> > On Sun, Dec 23, 2012 at 07:03:25PM +0200, Nuno J. Silva wrote:
8 >> >> On 2012-12-23, Alan McKinnon wrote:
9 >> >
10 >> >> > On Sun, 23 Dec 2012 12:22:24 +0200
11 >> >> > nunojsilva@×××××××.pt (Nuno J. Silva) wrote:
12 >> >
13 >> >> >> On 2012-12-18, Alan McKinnon wrote:
14 >> >
15 >> >> >> > On Tue, 18 Dec 2012 09:08:53 -0500
16 >> >> >> > Michael Mol <mikemol@×××××.com> wrote:
17 >> >
18 >> >
19 >> >> >> > This sentence summarizes my understanding of your post nicely:
20 >> >
21 >> >> >> >> Now, why is /usr special? It's because it contains executable
22 > code
23 >> >> >> >> the system might require while launching.
24 >> >
25 >> >> >> > Now there are only two approaches that could solve that problem:
26 >> >
27 >> >> >> > 1. Avoid it entirely
28 >> >> >> > 2. Deal with it using any of a variety of bootstrap techniques
29 >> >
30 >> >> >> > #1 is handled by policy, whereby any code the system might require
31 >> >> >> > while launching is not in /usr.
32 >> >
33 >> >> >> > #2 already has a solution, it's called an init*. Other solutions
34 >> >> >> > exist but none are as elegant as a throwaway temporary filesystem
35 >> >> >> > in RAM.
36 >> >
37 >> >> >> What about just mounting /usr as soon as the system boots?
38 >> >
39 >> >
40 >> >> > Please read the thread next time. The topic under discussion is
41 >> >> > solutions to the problem of not being able to do exactly that.
42 >> >
43 >> >> Then I suppose you can surely explain in a nutshell why can't init
44 >> >> scripts simply do that?
45 >> >
46 >> > Because certain people with influence have rearranged the filesystem so
47 >> > that programs within /usr are absolutely necessary for booting; they are
48 >> > needed _before_ init has a chance to mount /usr. So either /usr has to
49 >> > be in the root partition, or crazy kludges need to be used to mount /usr
50 >> > before the kernel runs init.
51 >>
52 >> I surely don't know the udev architecture well enough, but if this is
53 >> all done by the udev daemon, can't we just "mount /usr" before the
54 >> daemon is started? The only needed things should be mount (which is
55 >> under /bin here) and /etc/fstab.
56 >>
57 >> Or is something outside udev needing stuff under /usr?
58 >
59 > Yes. That's the pivot of the problem.
60
61 What is it?
62
63 I tried and I was able to mount a filesystem other than / shortly after
64 linux has passed control to init, in fact, with no udev stuff running.
65
66 --
67 Nuno Silva (aka njsg)
68 http://njsg.sdf-eu.org/