Re: Test-DFS for PowerPC

[Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>]

On Mon, Jun 07, 2004 at 08:14:18AM -0500, John Goerzen wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 07, 2004 at 06:40:12AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> > > Bad, bad, bad. You are doing "boot cd:,\boot\yaboot" from OF, right?
> > > (its not \install as on regular debian cds).
> > 
> > Yeah, directly copied from your other mail. I had trouble finding the
> > back-/ at first, as it seems to be inexistant on french mac keyboards, ,
> > but then i noticed that the OF is in qwerty layout anyway :)
> > 
> > > > BTW, where does the kernel on the iso comes from ? 
> > > 
> > > Selfmade since we can't build things like ide/cdrom... as modules
> > > because the primary initrd does not contain any modules. The config is
> > > on the image, it's debian 2.6.6 sources, config modelled after
> > > pmac_defconfig and the stuff from John's i386 config added.
> > 
> > Why not add those modules to the initrd and have it loaded, like the
> > mkinitrd generated initrd does ? Indeed it should even be possible to
> > use mkinitrd for this purpose, and add an own startup script or
> > something such. Not sure how mkinitrd would take to having ocaml
> > programs (or scripts) though, but i have the feeling that it should make
> > no difference.
> 
> What's the point, though?  We bloat the initrd size by putting libc, all
> the module loading tools, etc. on it, or we bloat the kernel size by
> compiling things into the kernel.

Well, i am speaking here not with my ocaml maintainer hat, but my
debian/powerpc kernel maintainer hat on. I Think it is a good idea to
reuse the same kernel as the one used in the debian kernel, instead of
building one specially for this purpose, since then it is really
probable that it will be wokring on the subarch the kernel builder did
build it on, and not any others.

True there is the issue of the initrd, which should be solved, but it is
hardly so difficult a problem.

> Also, mkinitrd seems to just load modules that are specified in a file
> like /etc/modules.  It doesn't do any real autodetection, so I don't see
> what it buys us at all.

Well, yes, mkinitrd does generate the initrd scripts and modules, but it
is based on the system it is running on, so not sure if this is
appropriate here. A better solution would be to use discover (or a ocaml
reimplementation using the discover database), as the debian-installer
does.

Actually, i believe that the initrd of the default debian kernel should
use discover too, and not the non-robust mess that is produced by
mkinitrd right now. And then, having an ocaml reimplementation of
discover would be great. I believe it doesn't really do much anyway,
just parse the lspci/sysfs/whatever output, and thae discover database,
and makes call to modprobe.


If ytou don't do that, and which to support more than just the subarches
that are most common, you will need to do agiant kernel like we did for
2.4.25 (the debian kernel is over 5Mo big i believe).

Friendly,

Sven Luther

> 
> -- John
> 
> 
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