Bug#337318: initramfs-tools: No way to specify module options for initramfs

[Martin Wilck <mwilck@arcor.de>]

Package: initramfs-tools
Version: 0.37
Severity: normal
Tags: patch

mkinitramfs does not copy the /etc/modprobe.d hierarchy to the initial
ramfs. This means that vital module options cannot be passed to the
initramfs system. For my laptop I need the line "options libata atapi_enabled=1"
to be able to use my CD drive.

For other systems (e.g. fibre channel with persistent binding) the
problems will be more severe.

Currently I am using a hook script in /etc/mkinitramfs/hooks to work
around this problem:

<script>
#!/bin/sh

PREREQ=""

prereqs()
{
        echo "$PREREQ"
}

case $1 in
prereqs)
        prereqs
        exit 0
        ;;
esac

cd /etc/modprobe.d

mkdir -p ${DESTDIR}/etc/modprobe.d
find . -depth | cpio -pdmu ${DESTDIR}/etc/modprobe.d 2>/dev/null
</script>

However I believe this should either be done by default in mkinitramfs,
or a script like mine should be part of the mkinitramfs package. I don't
see how doing this could do any harm.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (50, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.14-rc5-mw
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)

Versions of packages initramfs-tools depends on:
ii  busybox                       1:1.01-3   Tiny utilities for small and embed
ii  cpio                          2.6-8      GNU cpio -- a program to manage ar
ii  klibc-utils                   1.1.1-2    small statically-linked utilities 
ii  mklibs-copy                   0.1.18     Shared library reduction script
ii  udev                          0.071-1    /dev/ and hotplug management daemo

initramfs-tools recommends no packages.

-- no debconf information