On Thursday, June 09, 2011 21:22:50 Timothy L. wrote:
On Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 9:25 PM, C Anthony Risinger <anthony@xtfx.me> wrote:
On Jun 9, 2011 5:50 PM, "Heiko Baums" <lists@baums-on-web.de> wrote:
Am Thu, 9 Jun 2011 17:36:21 -0500
schrieb C Anthony Risinger <anthony@xtfx.me>:
does this sound genius or completely insane? some insanely genius guy once said they are only separated by a fine line ...
Sounds completely insane.
ooooook ... and ... why?
) initramfs is not very big (fallback on my sys is only 13MB + 2MB kern) ) keeps the whole thing in mkinitcpio ) does not affect any current images and is even backward compat ) small chance of absolute failure (i think :-) ) only small changes to mkinitcpio, if any at all ) ... ) ... KISS BABY! ) oh yeah and ... PROFIT!
im pretty sure it could be implemented as a hook (possibly 2) to the current system ... this might even be the best way. `install` hook would unpack the current image to a known location (prob `/lib/initcpio` somewhere), copy the kernel to the same place, and then add the directory to the image (after removing the old-old image if existed :-). the real `hook` would then check for one of two flags:
) kexec.flag ... kexec the old kernel with the boot.flag ) boot.flag ... chroot to "previous", run old hooks/mods/etc, exit chroot, switch_root like normal
i thought it was pretty succinct ... elegant even :-) ... with some sprinkles of insanity that give it the funny but mildly enjoyable aftertaste. i don't have any free time for a couple days, but i'm *pretty* sure this could be done as a hook to the current mkinitcpio in a couple hours -- might take a whack at it this weekend, would be useful, as i've personally mucked my boot more than once, and though i can recover easily enough, i'm liking this more and more ...
... though i could very well be missing something obvious, certainly wouldn't be the first time ... surely someone out there reads this and thinks "why not?"
C Anthony
Keeping the previous kernel after upgrading sounds sane to me. For the apprehensive, couldn't we just include a simple configuration option/check somewhere?
/etc/mkinitcpio.conf KEEP_PREVIOUS_KERNEL="yes"
I've read most of this thread but please excuse me if this has already been mentioned.
I'd accept that solution just so long as the default is set to "no" and not "yes." Most Arch people don't want old kernels.