Bug#279911: debian-installer: initrd not mentioned when no bootloader is chosen

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

On Sat, Nov 06, 2004 at 08:57:31AM +0100, Christian Perrier wrote:
> reassign 279911 nobootloader
> retitle 279911 Should mention the initrd parameter to be passed to kernel command line
> thanks
> 
> Quoting Philipp Kern (phil@philkern.de):
> > Package: debian-installer
> > Severity: important
> 
> I'm not really sure this deserves the "important" severity....the
> information you mention is missing is important, for sure, but one can
> expect that people using the "no boot loader" option are experts...

Well, ...

I first created the nobootloader for the pegasos machines, where the firmware
has the hability to load the kernel all by itself, and there were no other
bootloader available.

Pegasos being a powerpc/chrp machine, it uses a kernel which has the initrd
builtin the kernel image, and thus only one file is needed. The other machine
with specific support is some arm one, which may probably be in the same case.

Now, in the generic case, you may or may not want a initrd= option. The only
way to know that is probably when installing the kernels, which happens in
base-config. We would have to distinguish the following cases : 

  1) does the kernel used actually need an initrd, or not. 

  2) does the arch/subarch in question have a builtin initrd, or a separate
  one which needs the initrd= option.

We would need to set two debconf variables in base-installer, which can then
be read by nobootloader, and inform the user appropriately.

Also, another option would be to parse the kernel command line options
provided by the user, remove the d-i ones, and then suggest that the user may
reuse any of those command line options when doing the reboot.

In any case, both of these solutions need some work, and most important, need
also a string modification, which would not be ok at this stage of the release
cycle, i think we are even in string freeze right now, aren't we ? Altough if
i remember well, the nobootloader generic case is constructed in such a way to
allow the initrd modification without touching the strings.

Opinions on if this is worth it at this stage or not ? 

Friendly,

Sven Luther