Re: [D-I] Supporting 2.6.14 kernels in base-installer
[ added jbailey, inifinity and waldi to the cc list ]
On Sat, Nov 12, 2005 at 11:42:26PM +0100, Frans Pop wrote:
> I've taken a first look at what is involved in supporting installation of
> 2.6.14 kernels in Debian Installer _for the installed system_.
>
> Note: This is a separate issue from running the installer with a 2.6.14
> kernel.
>
> During kernel installation sysfs needs to be mounted on /target (at least
> for yaird).
not needed for initramfs-tools.
> This is currently breaking installations for unstable (and will break
> network based base installations for beta1 and daily builds when 2.6.14
> migrates to testing).
> /target/proc is currently mounted by apt-install, so this probably needs
> to be added there (only for 2.6 kernels).
>
> The following packages are currently pulled in as dependencies by the
> 2.6.14 kernel:
> - yaird
> - perl (3.3 MB)
> - perl-modules (2.2 MB)
> - libhtml-template-perl
> - libparse-recdescent-perl
> These requirements look quite heavy to me and may be a problem for the
> netinst.
>
> If we would install initramfs-tools, we would need:
> - busybox
> - klibc-utils
> - mklibs-copy
> - udev
> This looks a lot lighter, but the dependency on udev probably means some
> manipulation of /target/dev will be required. Using udev in d-i itself
> may make that easier.
klibc-utils could be replaced by the busybox utils. waldi proposed that.
that would reduce the porter work for klibc which is not yet ready for
any arch.
> Both initrd generators have limitations in what they currently support. We
> may have to either always install both, or include logic that
> pre-installs one or the other depending on the situation.
initramfs-tools is already tested in combination with d-i on ubuntu,
i guess it shouldn't be so hard to drop that in.
initramfs-tools in debian had a hard time with a much newer busybox (which
got fixed) and newer udev (timing troubles). waldi hardcoded the timeout
for the dev population to 2 seconds that seems not to be good enough
default for all setups. i searched for a nice condition to test against
and would be happy to learn one.
> Currently we modify the configuration of initrd-tools:
> - temporary hardcoding of root partition
> - default resume partition
> Would we need to do the same for the new initrd generators?
the root partion is set on boot by the boot loader.
the init from the initramfs-tools reads that directly.
the default resume partition should be set in the kernel command line
on boot by the boot loaders.
but it can be set in initramfs-tools although the boot param will
override.
no need to do something special.
> The dependency on sysfs and udev will make it practically impossible to
> install a 2.6 kernel when running the installer with 2.4. We should
> probably check for this in base-installer and make sure the option is not
> presented to the user.
that needs to be shaken out anyway as this is a possible upgrade path
from sarge.
> Please comment. Any people interested in working on this?
please wait for some feedback from aboves cc'ed peoples
as they were currently on conf and are on the way back i guess.
--
maks
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