Bug#606806: initramfs-tools: Handling of numeric root= arguments is not udev-friendly
On Mon, 13 Dec 2010 03:31:44 -0500 (EST), H. R. Oberhage wrote:
>
> This is also the answer to you question what I use 'it' for, namely simply
> LILO.
As I suspected.
First of all, as Ben is well aware, I am not a maintainer for initramfs-tools,
udev, or any other Debian package. I'm just a fellow lilo user, and therefore,
an interested party. The translation of a root specification from user-space
notation (root=/dev/whatever) to kernel-space notation (root=xxxx, where xxxx
is a three- or four-digit hexadecimal number representing the major and minor
number of the device) is something that lilo has always done. There is nothing
new here. Adding udev to the mix is what has complicated things. There may
be other boot loaders which do the same thing. I also am opposed to
deprecating the ability of initramfs-tools to handle a hexadecimal numeric root
specification.
While the powers that be figure out how best to handle this type of root
specification, I would like to call your attention to a work-around for
the problem that will get you up and running in the meantime: use a UUID
specification. For example, on my system I use
...
boot=/dev/disk/by-uuid/055d446a-977d-4aa6-877d-62c716f5e85a
...
root="UUID=055d446a-977d-4aa6-877d-62c716f5e85a"
in /etc/lilo.conf.
In this example, the lilo stage 1 boot loader is installed in the boot
sector of a primary partition, which is also the root partition.
(It happens to correspond to /dev/sda2 on my system.)
Note that "boot" must be a block special device or a symbolic link
to a block special device, as above, but "root" can be a quoted
UUID specification, as supported by /etc/fstab. When the root
device is specified this way, lilo does not do any translation.
The kernel command line sees
... root=UUID=055d446a-977d-4aa6-877d-62c716f5e85a ...
which gets you around the problem for now.
Respectfully submitted,
--
.''`. Stephen Powell
: :' :
`. `'`
`-
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