1 |
Hi, William. |
2 |
|
3 |
On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 11:01:59AM -0500, William Hubbs wrote: |
4 |
> On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 07:32:20PM -0500, Bruce Hill wrote: |
5 |
> > On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 05:57:06PM -0500, Dale wrote: |
6 |
> > > Bruce Hill wrote: |
7 |
> > > > On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 05:33:02PM -0500, Dale wrote: |
8 |
> > > >> I'm hoping that since I use eudev, I don't have to worry about this. |
9 |
> > > >> If I do, this could get interesting, again. Dale |
10 |
> > > > Do you have /usr separate from / ? |
11 |
|
12 |
> > > Yep. From my understanding tho, eudev is not supposed to be affected by |
13 |
> > > this problem tho. |
14 |
|
15 |
> > > One reason for this being seperate, I have / and /boot on a regular |
16 |
> > > partition and everything else on LVM. Sometimes that /usr gets a bit |
17 |
> > > full. It's not so bad after I moved all the portage stuff out and put |
18 |
> > > it in /var. Now I have to watch /var too. lol |
19 |
|
20 |
> > > Dale |
21 |
|
22 |
> > You need to read the blog post listed in the news item, as it's not just |
23 |
> > specific to udev anymore. |
24 |
|
25 |
> Bruce is correct; This issue is not specific to udev/eudev/mdev. |
26 |
|
27 |
> I suppose that what I am about to say isn't really relevant, but it is |
28 |
> unfortunate over the past year that people blamed udev specifically for |
29 |
> this. It is true that it does things that don't work if /usr isn't |
30 |
> mounted, but eudev does as well, since it is basically the same code. |
31 |
|
32 |
Who else is there to blame? We are continually being told that a |
33 |
separate /usr is "broken", as though this were some unfortunate act of |
34 |
<insert your deity here>, much like an earthquake. This gets patronising |
35 |
really quickly. (Please note, I'm NOT blaming you here. I appreciate |
36 |
that you're as much victim as Dale or me or anyone else round here.) |
37 |
|
38 |
No, this breaking of separate /usr was done by some specific project, |
39 |
some specific person, even, in a supreme display of incompetence, malice, |
40 |
or arrogance. How come this project and this person have managed to |
41 |
maintain such a low profile? There seems to have been some sort of |
42 |
conspiracy to do this breakage in secret, each member of the coven |
43 |
pushing the plot until the damage was irrevocable. Who was it? |
44 |
|
45 |
> If you read flameeyes' blog post, you will get a better idea of what the |
46 |
> issue involves. It is the entire boot process and how to deal with which |
47 |
> software is considered critical for booting. |
48 |
|
49 |
> There is no reason to rebuild your server; we aren't telling you you |
50 |
> have to merge /usr into /. The only thing we are saying is that you will |
51 |
> need to use an initramfs if you are going to keep them separate. |
52 |
|
53 |
"Only"? ONLY??? You say that as though creating an initramfs were a |
54 |
trifle, trivial, and of no moment. |
55 |
|
56 |
An initramfs is a highly complicated, fragile contraption, and has all |
57 |
the aesthetic appeal of a car crash. It is a desperate expedient, an |
58 |
ugly kludge, made necessary (for binary distributions) by the design |
59 |
deficiencies of the Linux kernel. Who in their right mind (other than a |
60 |
specialist at a binary distribution) would want to spend evenings and |
61 |
weekends battling this abortion just trying to get their machine to boot? |
62 |
The alternative is to install some magic, effectively binary blob, |
63 |
generated by genkernel or dracut or whatever. Who knows what these blobs |
64 |
will do during booting? |
65 |
|
66 |
Consider how ridiculous booting Linux is. Firstly, on power up, the bios |
67 |
initialises then loads the program from the HDD's boot sector, namely |
68 |
grub or lilo. This loads its main part. Then it loads the kernel, |
69 |
which starts, then the init sequence. Each element of this sequence can |
70 |
be individually justified, but the whole lot together just look |
71 |
incompetent - why can't the kernel just start? And now, on top of all |
72 |
this the conspirators want to force us to use an initramfs. |
73 |
|
74 |
Ah yes, the deficiencies of the kernel. It can only mount one file |
75 |
system when it starts. It's incapable of mounting LVM2 systems (even |
76 |
though it contains LVM2 code). It's incapable of mounting encrypted |
77 |
partitions (even though it contains encryption code), ...... So because |
78 |
of these holes, a system must either be constrained in it's makeup (as |
79 |
mine is) or use an ugly hack. It can (still) mount RAID partitions, I |
80 |
suppose. |
81 |
|
82 |
> I have a pretty simple setup, but I have been using an initramfs which I |
83 |
> built some time ago with genkernel and I barely know it is there. |
84 |
|
85 |
Until, after some update, it reminds you of its presence by not booting |
86 |
your machine. That's the sort of excitement I can do without. |
87 |
|
88 |
> I recommend that you familiarize yourself with genkernel or dracut and |
89 |
> build an initramfs. Since nothing is changing until at least |
90 |
> Nov 1, you can test your initramfs by adding an entry to your boot |
91 |
> loader configuration that uses it and get it set up correctly while you |
92 |
> can still fall back on booting without it. |
93 |
|
94 |
> I do not recommend that anyone who has separate /usr "do nothing" at |
95 |
> this point. Please re-read the second paragraph of the news item. |
96 |
|
97 |
I dismantled my separate /usr partition some while ago in anticipation of |
98 |
what has transpired. Previously, it was in an LVM2 partition, where I'd |
99 |
prefer it still to be. Now, /usr is just in my root partition, /dev/md6. |
100 |
At least RAID is still available. |
101 |
|
102 |
> Thanks, |
103 |
|
104 |
> William |
105 |
|
106 |
-- |
107 |
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany). |