initrd/initramfs: Step 2 ongoing, ramdisk-tools needs fixing

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

Package: yaird
Severity: Serious

Hello, ...

This is the second step in the linux-2.6 >=2.6.13 ramdisk-tool resolution
process. As you well know, 2.6.13 dropped devfs, whcih means initrd-tool
cannot be used anymore, and we now have a choice of yaird or initramfs-tools,
to make things nice and all, a proposal was sent to all of you and on
debian-kernel, but only Simon Horman commented :

  http://lists.debian.org/debian-kernel/2005/10/msg00232.html

So, i am now asking that all ramdisk-tool packages which the kernel team will
support implement the two following things :

  1) Provide the linux-ramdisk-tool virtual package.

  2) implement in their mkinitrd-compatible wrapper the two following options :

    --supported-host-version : will return 0 if the version passed as argument
    (for example 2.6.12-1-powerpc) can be used to generate a ramdisk, and 1
    otherwise. This will mostly generally be 1 always for initramfs and
    initrd -tools, not sure about the 2.2 kernel case and such though, and
    some kind of 2.6 version for yaird.

    --supported-target-version : will return 0 if the tool know how to generate
    a ramdisk for the version passed as argument (for example 2.6.13-1-powerpc),
    and 1 otherwise. This will be >=2.6.8 for yaird, >=2.6.12 for
    initramfs-tools, and <2.6.13 for initrd-tools.

Note, i mark those bugs as RC, since this is of primordial importance to get
implemented quickly so that we may move 2.6.13 and beyond to sid in a timely
fashion.

Friendly,

Sven Luther