Re: [gentoo-user] separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Dale]

William Hubbs wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 07:32:20PM -0500, Bruce Hill wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 05:57:06PM -0500, Dale wrote:
>>> Bruce Hill wrote:
>>>> On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 05:33:02PM -0500, Dale wrote:
>>>>> I'm hoping that since I use eudev, I don't have to worry about this.
>>>>> If I do, this could get interesting, again. Dale
>>>> Do you have /usr separate from / ?
>>>
>>> Yep.  From my understanding tho, eudev is not supposed to be affected by
>>> this problem tho.
>>>
>>> One reason for this being seperate, I have / and /boot on a regular
>>> partition and everything else on LVM.  Sometimes that /usr gets a bit
>>> full.  It's not so bad after I moved all the portage stuff out and put
>>> it in /var.  Now I have to watch /var too.  lol
>>>
>>> Dale
>>
>> You need to read the blog post listed in the news item, as it's not just
>> specific to udev anymore.
>
> Bruce is correct; This issue is not specific to udev/eudev/mdev.
>
> I suppose that what I am about to say isn't really relevant, but it is
> unfortunate over the past year that people blamed udev specifically for
> this. It is true that it does things that don't work if /usr isn't
> mounted, but eudev does as well, since it is basically the same code.
>
> If you read flameeyes' blog post, you will get a better idea of what the
> issue involves. It is the entire boot process and how to deal with which
> software is considered critical for booting.
>
> There is no reason to rebuild your server; we aren't telling you you
> have to merge /usr into /. The only thing we are saying is that you will
> need to use an initramfs if you are going to keep them separate.
>
> I have a pretty simple setup, but I have been using an initramfs which I
> built some time ago with genkernel and I barely know it is there.
>
> I recommend that you familiarize yourself with genkernel or dracut and
> build an initramfs. Since nothing is changing until at least
> Nov 1, you can test your initramfs by adding an entry to your boot
> loader configuration that uses it and get it set up correctly while you
> can still fall back on booting without it.
>
> I do not recommend that anyone who has separate /usr "do nothing" at
> this point. Please re-read the second paragraph of the news item.
>
> Thanks,
>
> William
>

One thing that you seem to be missing here.  Before Gentoo, I used
Mandrake.  It had a init thingy.  It caused me much grief and is one
reason I left Mandrake.  I also didn't like the upgrade process either
but one reason I chose Gentoo is no init thingy.  I wanted to be rid of
that.  Now, whether it is udev or not, here comes that stupid init
thingy just because someone doesn't want to put files where they should
be which is not inside /usr.

So, given my history with the init thingy, if I do use a init thingy and
it fails for whatever reason, I'll be installing something else.  I done
went down the road of trying to fix one of those stupid things and I
have no plan or desire to do so again.  I'm also not going to spend
hours reinstalling Gentoo either.  If, more than likely when, the init
thingy fails, I'll be installing something else and I'll most my last
sign off message here.  One thing about Linux, there are plenty of
distros to pick from .  I love Gentoo but I like to be able to boot up
without dealing with a init thingy that I have to fix when it goes belly
up.

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or
how you interpreted my words!