Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Neil Bothwick <neil@××××××××××.uk>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: After /usr conflation: why not copy booting software to /sbin rather than initramfs?
Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2012 22:55:30
Message-Id: 20120327235300.5d494ec1@hactar.digimed.co.uk
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: After /usr conflation: why not copy booting software to /sbin rather than initramfs? by Alan Mackenzie
1 On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 22:01:28 +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
2
3 > > Your package manager only knows about the copy in the original
4 > > location.
5 >
6 > So? The same applies to a copy in the initramfs.
7
8 No it does not. the initramfs is built using the versions installed on
9 your system, and unloaded as soon as root is switched to /. At no time
10 are two different versions available in your path.
11
12 > > When you update you'll have multiple versions of the same program or
13 > > library in your path.
14 >
15 > Well, with the manual/script copying which needs doing either for /sbin
16 > or initramfs, that will be several copies of a program, not several
17 > versions.
18
19 Multiple copies of the same version is inefficient, multiple versions is
20 potentially disastrous.
21
22 > I'm still trying to see the reason why an /sbin with the same contents
23 > as a putative initramfs won't work.
24
25 You seem to be trying very hard to ignore the point that the initramfs
26 does not need to contain as much as /usr or even /. It only needs to
27 contain the files required to mount / and /usr. this can be as few as 2,
28 busybox and the init script. Even with encrypted filesystems on LVM
29 volumes running on RAID, this box's initramfs contains only 5 files.
30
31 % grep file /usr/src/init.cfg
32 file /bin/busybox /bin/busybox 755 0 0
33 file /sbin/lvm.static /sbin/lvm.static 755 0 0
34 file /sbin/mdadm /sbin/mdadm 755 0 0
35 file /sbin/cryptsetup /sbin/cryptsetup 755 0 0
36 file /init /usr/src/init.sh 755 0 0
37
38
39 --
40 Neil Bothwick
41
42 "Press Return to Continue" - known as "The Mail Menupause".

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