Bug#677157: initramfs-tools: root=/dev/nfs mostly useless due to BOOT=local being defined in initramfs.conf

[Vagrant Cascadian <vagrant@debian.org>]

Package: initramfs-tools
Version: 0.106
Severity: normal
Tags: patch


Specifying root=/dev/nfs doesn't really do anything without also either 
specifying boot=nfs or changing BOOT= in initramfs.conf:

  /dev/nfs)
        [ -z "${BOOT}" ] && BOOT=nfs
        ;;

At which point, you could just as well not specify root=/dev/nfs at all.

This breaks the historical method for network booting with nfsroot with the 
kernel arguments:

  ip=dhcp root=/dev/nfs

I guess the check to make sure BOOT wasn't already set was changed in order to 
fix putting boot= anywhere in the boot commandline:

  http://bugs.debian.org/453294

But it seems to me the correct thing to do in that case would be to specify 
boot=live after root=/dev/nfs... since the order of the argument processing 
matters, rather than preferring the result of one argument over another.

Alternately/Additionally, why is BOOT=local defined in initramfs.conf at all? 
What about only setting BOOT=local if $BOOT is undefined, after all the 
argument processing is done:

diff --git a/conf/initramfs.conf b/conf/initramfs.conf
index abc231b..995d455 100644
--- a/conf/initramfs.conf
+++ b/conf/initramfs.conf
@@ -53,7 +53,7 @@ COMPRESS=gzip
 # nfs - Boot using an NFS drive as the root of the drive.
 #

-BOOT=local
+#BOOT=local

 #
 # DEVICE: ...
diff --git a/init b/init
index cbd22e2..7e54a73 100755
--- a/init
+++ b/init
@@ -186,6 +186,11 @@ for x in $(cat /proc/cmdline); do
        esac
 done

+if [ -z "${BOOT}" ]; then
+       # Default to BOOT=local if no boot script defined.
+       BOOT=local
+fi
+
 if [ -n "${noresume}" ]; then
        export noresume
        unset resume


live well,
  vagrant