[arch-dev-public] mkinitcpio 0.6 alpha - testing and help needed

Eric Bélanger snowmaniscool at gmail.com
Wed Feb 3 23:03:55 EST 2010


On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 1:13 PM, Thomas Bächler <thomas at archlinux.org> wrote:
> Am 24.01.2010 18:05, schrieb Thomas Bächler:
>> Quoted from http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/17298 (which is also to be
>> used for feedback, besides the threads on these mailing lists):
>>
>> So, now something can be tested. I recommend using it in conjunction
>> with testing/udev only:
>>
>> [kill-klibc]
>> Server = http://dev.archlinux.org/~thomas/kill-klibc/i686/
>>
>> or
>>
>> [kill-klibc]
>> Server = http://dev.archlinux.org/~thomas/kill-klibc/x86_64/
>>
>> The standard hooks work, so do keymap, lvm2, encrypt. What does NOT work
>> is raid/mdadm/dmraid and root on NFS. I would appreciate any input and
>> patches w.r.t. those, as well as any testing. The v86d package also
>> needs to be fixed, but that is trivial.
>>
>> device-mapper, lvm2 and cryptsetup have a weird "1.local" pkgrel so they
>> won't collide with the ones from the repo, sorry if that bothers anyone.
>>
>> If you upgrade to this repositories, your existing mkinitcpio will be
>> replaced and all klibc packages will be gone too. So, if you try it,
>> please save your existing initramfs to a different filename as a
>> fallback, and do not perform kernel upgrades until you either confirmed
>> that it works, or downgraded to the klibc-based mkinitcpio.
>
> Bump! Virtually nobody has performed any testing (except the people I
> poked about it). Also, I still don't have fixed raid or dmraid hooks,
> nor any suggestion for implementing root on NFS (of the last three, I
> use neither). I could write raid, but I have no idea if it will work. I
> don't know what exactly needs to be done in the NFS case, because that
> was all hidden inside "ipconfig" from klibc.
>
> The part that works (standard hooks, keymap, cryptsetup, lvm2) has been
> 100% stable and has worked perfectly for all of the testers so far
> (which aren't many, so you never know).

Just tested on my i686 system with lvm2. It booted fine and everything
looks OK, in fact I haven't noted any difference.

Hooks used in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf:
HOOKS="base udev autodetect pata usbinput keymap lvm2 filesystems"

I would be willing to test raid support when it will be added. I'm not
really familiar with kernels and early userspace stuff so I can't be
much help in making a patch for it.


>
> Note that the klibc-based mkinitcpio has problems which will never be
> fixed (because I can't fix them, or don't want to fix them), some of
> which are already fixed in the 0.6 branch.
>
> One example is the lack of vfat detection in fstype, which affects
> people who want to put archiso on vfat volumes - this is no problem
> because we use blkid now. I am sure there are more examples.
> I simply refuse to put more time into something that is entirely broken
> and can't even be rebuilt against our current kernel headers (yes, the
> last time klibc was successfully rebuilt was against 2.6.29 iirc, the
> version I built against 2.6.31 works on x86_64, but not on i686).
>
>


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