Re: initrd on installed kernels
On Wed, Jun 23, 2004 at 10:21:23PM +0200, Thibaut VARENE wrote:
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> Hi,
>
> I was wondering why are we using initd on installed debian kernels.
>
> Let me explain myself: I can perfectly understand that initrd is needed
> for d-i, but, when I recently updated an x86 woody box to testing,
> upgrading its kernel to 2.4.26 debian, I noticed that the initrd thingy
> was installed (got the nice warning about lilo).
>
> I didn't pay much attention to that at that time, knowing it was the
> new default for debian kernels. But, I started giggling when I realized
> the total boot time (time before first login prompt) of the box was
> almost tripled (that's a P2 400).
>
> So here comes my suggestion: why not having a specific kernel deb for
> d-i *with* (the one corresponding to the version selected for the
> stable installer), and the rest of the kernel debs *without* initrd, as
> they used to be? That implies that d-i would have to install a
> non-initrd kernel, obviously.
Well, we almost reached 4Mo of compressed kernel image on powerpc with
the non-initrd thingy, and it broke on some subarches (like prep). So
there is obiously a limit to the non-initrd kernels.
Maybe you just need to build your own non-initrd kernel, don't you ? You
just take the kernel-source and config of the debian kernel,
unmodularize what you know you will want (mostly filesystem and ide
modules probably) and build the resulting kernel.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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