Re: Minimum initrd to satisfy init
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Name Withheld wrote:
> Can anyone tell me, or point me towards something that will explain
> what is the minimum I need to put into an initrd image to satisfy init
> and complete the boot process?
>
> I have a kernel that I can load into an old i386, that fails at the
> point where it tries to open /dev/console, and fails to execute /sbin/init.
>
> I'm attempting to set root as /dev/NFS, and have successfully mounted
> root on a remote bootp server, but none of the nodes in /dev have been
> set up, and apparently the kernel can not execute the init scripts that
> I've put in the bootp server directory that my old i386 has mounted as
> root.
> The obsolete i386 which I am attempting to turn into a
> Nat/gateway/firewall (again) is not capable of booting from CDROM.
Sounds quite interesting. Please collect your findings (the ones
mentioned in your email already and stuff you discover in the future) at
a wiki page somewhere at http://wiki.debian.org/ and advertise on this
list the address of the reated wiki page.
(if you are unfamiliar with and/or uninterested in wikis, then feel free
to post the info to me privately and I'll try to find time to publish it
for you).
Regarding the specific info you ask for, you might find the
documentation of yaird relevant. Yaird is an alternative to
initramfs-tools, originally written as a proof of concept - the concept
being a different approach to dealing with initial ramdisk generation.
So the documentation is also an in-depth description of the logic of
initial ramdisks and some quirks and workarounds needed for some broken
hardware and/or code. Install the package "yaird" from Debian testing or
unstable, and read /usr/share/doc/yaird/yaird.html
You may also be interested in using yaird for building your initial
ramdisk, as the tool allows for pretty major customization, relatively easy.
Beware, though, that the current releases of yaird has no support for
the old initrd format used in 2.4.x kernels, and also heavily relies on
sysfs only (officially) included since 2.6.8.
If you are interested in using yaird for building old-style initrd
images, then please say so, and I'll be happy to help recover the
dropped support in yaird for that format (the reason for dropping it was
lacking of actual use cases).
Kind regards,
- Jonas
Maintainer of yaird (and heavy user of diskless booting!)
- --
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/
- Enden er nær: http://www.shibumi.org/eoti.htm
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