Bug#606806: initramfs-tools: Handling of numeric root= arguments is not udev-friendly

[Evan Broder <evan@ebroder.net>]

On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 1:34 PM, Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk> wrote:
> On Sat, 2010-12-11 at 13:14 -0800, Evan Broder wrote:
>> Package: initramfs-tools
>> Version: 0.98.1
>> Severity: normal
>> Tags: patch
>> User: ubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
>> Usertags: origin-ubuntu natty ubuntu-patch
>>
>> If you pass a root= argument with a numeric device number
>> (i.e. root=0806), that's currently resolved by running mknod to create
>> a /dev/root device with an appropriate major/minor number and setting
>> ROOT=/dev/root (the parse_numeric function in scripts/functions).
> [...]
>
> Maybe this feature should simply be deprecated.  What do you use it for?

I don't use the feature myself; I was fixing the bug on behalf of a
user that reported it in Ubuntu, since it seemed simple to fix with a
low chance of regressing other behavior. I've CC'd him to find out.

Ruediger, can you expand on why you're using root=0806 instead of
root=/dev/sda6 or a UUID or some other means of specifying the root
device?

Thanks