Bug#640418: Does not use an initrd on mipsel/loongson-2f systems

[Javier Vasquez <j.e.vasquez.v@gmail.com>]

Hi, I'm an user, not a dev, but I own a lemote mini-pc, not the
laptop, and the linux kernel for loongson-2f can be loaded through
initrd.  Actually that's the way archloong does it.  This doesn't have
anything to do to the ability to boot with grub.  Actually archloong
does not support grub (neither any other bootloader on top of pmon) at
all for lemote products...

Even when gNewSense has been able to make grub work, not sure if only
for laptops, or mini-pcs included, on debian this is broken for
mini-pcs, when trying to load the initrd the machine just goes to
limbo.  So I'd suggest not to depend upon grub to make decisions about
the kernel or initrd...

That said, I think using an initrd should be no problem, given that
other distros are using it.  But this ability should not depend upont
grub.  Whether because grub is broken, or because people wan to still
use the pmon bootloader, or because enabling pmon as a backup when
things go wrong with grub, people should still be able to load the
initrd, or to use an ext4 root FS.

Notice also that to get ext4 support for root, there's no need for
initrd either.  It could be gotten by providing direct native support
in the kernel.  This sounds like the safest, cause then mounting the
root FS will work no matter something else is broken, like loading the
initrd or booting through grub...  In the case of archloong, the dev
decided to support initrd, and still ext4 is compiled directly within
the kernel, not as a module, and it doesn't have problems having root
FS being ext4...

Thanks,

-- 
Javier.