Re: loopback device ownership

[bruce@pixar.com (Bruce Perens)]

> BTW, does anybody have any experience with the initrd feature of the
> latest kernels? I'm experimenting with heavily modularized kernels
> (basically, only floppy, nfs and ext2 compiled (too bad I cannot
> modularize ide) to see if I can load the required extra modules (scsi,
> network drivers, ...) from the initial ram disk. If I'm not mistaken,
> up to this moment, all is loaded without the kernel. So I should be
> able to boot my scsi only system without compiling scsi into the
> kernel.

I played with initrd a few months ago, using a ramdisk floppy instead
of having LILO load it (to make it easier to change the filesystem).
You need a lot of stuff on that initrd filesystem - the module tools, a
compressed archive of modules, a decompressor, a shell, and shared
libraries. Look at the tricks I use in the boot-floppies package to
make the root floppy smaller - chopping down the shared libraries,
using "tiny" versions of unix tools, etc.  Those will probably be
necessary on the initrd filesystem.

Also, I think the parent of all other processes was _not_ PID 1 when the
initrd was root. That may have been changed by now.

	Thanks

	Bruce
--
     Clinton isn't perfect, but I like him a whole lot more than Dole.

Bruce Perens AB6YM          Bruce@Pixar.com            http://www.hams.com/