Re: debian boot CDs & G5

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

Moving this from debian-boot to debian-kernel, as i doubt it has
anything to do with debian-installer, and is more kernel-related.

On Wed, May 26, 2004 at 05:02:30PM +0200, Jens Schmalzing wrote:
> Dear Sven,
> 
> > Well, having it automatically called on the subarches that need it.
> 
> You should be able to put it in the postinst_hook in
> kernel-img.conf(5).  If not, file a bug report, please.

Ok, i will look at it, expect a patch or bug report soon.

> > Yeah, sure, but i think there is a misunderstanding. the duty of
> > discover is exactly to find the modules needed by your system and load
> > them. Exactly the same thing mkinitrd does (or more exactly the the
> > /bin/init script of the initrd), just in a bigger scale.
> 
> There are two subtle differences that make discover less than ideal.
> First, discover does both the finding and the loading in one step,
> while we want mkinitrd to find the modules and initrd to load them.

Mmm. Should : 

  discover-modprobe -n : Echo the modprobe invocations instead of running them.

not be enough, with a bit of parsing of the result naturally. On my box
it gives :

  $ discover-modprobe -n
  modprobe snd-via82xx

> Second, discover indiscriminiately attempts to load drivers for all
> the hardware, while we only want the root filesystem.

So, we only need to trim the discover database to what is in the initrd,
or what we want to load at this stage ? 

> > Remember that discover is used in the debian-installer initrd, so
> > why should it not also work for us ?
> 
> Because the debian-installer initrd is generic, while kernel-image
> initrds are system specific.

Well, i am still doubtfull about that. First i sincerely doubt that the
4Mo initrd i have generated on my system is indeed very specific, and
this poses problem in case of modifying of the hardware, or traveling
around with the harddisk and use it on various different boxes.

> > Yeah, until some random user plugs in a random scsi or ide or
> > whatever card you had not thought about, and then you are screwed.
> > It works for mainstream hardware, but is not robust.
> 
> It worked on the G5 out of the box.  After I fixed it on my Pismo, it
> also worked on every other Powermac I've tried since.

Ok, now, let's say your disk controller died, your box is no more under
waranty, and you just go out and buy a cheap PCI ide controller and plug
your disk on it.

And again, if you want it to be system specific, we have to trim the
initrd a lot more than what it is today.

Friendly,

Sven Luther