Re: Initrd or not ? (was: SOLVED: New kernel unable to mount/see a whole HD)
On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 02:45:26PM -0500, Joey Hess wrote:
> J.F. Gratton wrote:
> > - I know my hardware, it's unlikely to change in a near-future; a new
> > kernel is more likely to come out thant my hardware to change; why using
> > an initrd then if I know exactly what needs to be put in modules and
> > must not ?
>
> This assumes a best case scenario that you will never need to get some
> new peice of hardware working at a time when taking the time out to set
> up a new kernel will be painful. No matter what percentage of time this
> best case scenario is true, it will never be true 100% of the time, and
> as time goes on the chances that it will fail to be true at some point
> approaches one. Some of the failure scenarios are very painful. After it
> has failed to be true a couple of times, people tend to switch over to
> modular kernels.
>
I use kernel-package, and when I add or change a module I usually seem
to end up rebuilding everything anyway. This is partly my
conservatism, and partly make-kpkg's conservatism; it and its docs
tend to push complete remakes. Also, if the new modules are in the
kernel tree, as opposed to the separate modules directory, I don't
know how to reach in and build just one part.
Can you give any pointers about how to get new or revised drivers in
with minimal building?
This is a special case of the general question "I just made a small
change to the kernel source; how can I avoid rebuilding everything?"
A lot of the answers have tended to "it's dangerous to try to do this,
just rebuild everything."
Ross
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