(CC to d-kernel and yaird-devel for comments. Topic is a question in Debian Installer regarding the initramfs generator to use. For the start of the thread see: http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2005/12/msg01228.html) On Thursday 29 December 2005 09:07, Christian Perrier wrote: > > by which tool, we can either set single defaults or drop the priority > > to medium. > > s/can/must..:-) > > Given that the question is really technical, I would even suggest to > drop the priority down to low..... Hmm. I think it is on the same level as offering static network configuration over DHCP or, maybe better, (not) loading some modules during hardware detection. The main advantage of the patch as I see it is its flexibility: it allows both us and derivatives to set things up as they like with only minor changes: - per arch defaults - option of offering alternative generators - option to ask the user which generator to use - option to preseed It also makes the installer independent of the default dependency set in kernel-image packages. We could even add a template to set the priority of the question per architecture if there is a real need for that... I agree the question should be avoided if possible, certainly for default installs. Whether to ask the question during medium priority installs is debatable, but, as long as both tools have issues, IMO a good thing. My main reason for setting it high initially was the brokenness of initramfs-tools (or udev or whatever) wrt. the loading ide-disk in some cases. As that will be fixed in a new upload of initramfs-tools today, I see no problem with changing the priority to medium. Next thing to decide is which of the two generators should be default. My personal preference goes to initramfs-tools. Main reason is that yaird's "minimalistic" and "fail when in doubt" approach is more likely to result in (possibly unneeded) installation failures than initramfs-tools. The second reason is the missing support in yaird for drivers that do not yet have sysfs support. I feel that yaird's approach is more suited to upgrades than to new installs. A failure to reboot is probably less problematic for a newly installed system than for a production system (therefore having yaird as the default dependency in the kernel-image packages might be a good choice). Cheers, FJP Here are the settings I propose to upload the new version of base-installer with: - Question asked at medium priority - Default generator settings (based on [1] and klibc availability): Default: initramfs-tools yaird Default[alpha]: initramfs-tools Default[hppa]: yaird Default[ia64]: yaird Default[m68k]: yaird Default[mips]: yaird Default[mipsel]: yaird Default[sparc]: yaird [1] http://wiki.debian.org/InitrdReplacementOptions
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