Re: An initrd proposal
Sorry for the late response, but I am not subscribed to the list and
only read the message because of weekly news.
> 2) get the installation binaries
> - load necessary modules
> - configure userspace programs if necessary
> - access the medium
> - get a single archive from the medium and unpack it to the ramdisk
> To do something useful in 2), we will need at least a shell, an init
> program and the c library (unless we use only static binaries which I doubt
> would save us something and is too unflexible anyway) We probably want a
> user interface at this point so an ncurses library is necessary.
> All this together with the modules to access the installation binaries
> needs to fit on the bootimage. Let me show how this is possible:
As a email of mine has been referenced in this mail, you might know that
I have a /working/ linurc solution (my system boots with ide support as
a module from an ide hdd).
I do not need a shell nor an init program. The only binaries I need on
the initrd image are
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 230243 Oct 6 16:20 linuxrc
-rwx------ 1 root root 338720 Oct 6 16:20 sbin/insmod
A few device files in dev, the modules in lib and that's it. The
binaries are statically linked at the moment and therefore I think we
could save space with a minimal c library and dynamical linking.
What is not there (my initrd image is intended for non-interactive
booting when the system has already been installed and could be used by
Debian after the installation process - just to make it easier for
people) is a user interface for selecting the modules, but here we could
use the detect library for autodetection (maybe).
just a thought,
Rene
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