On Mon, Dec 16, 2013, at 10:05, Laurent Bercot wrote: > On 2013-12-16 01:08, Rob Landley wrote: > > The most recent kernel has my initmpfs patches, meaning initramfs > > can now be a tmpfs instead of ramfs. > > [snip blurb] > > You're listing reasons why initramfs (or initmpfs, if you prefer) is > more logical than it was before, more convenient, etc. All this may be > true, but it does not mean initramfs is actually *useful*. > > I have yet to see a case where initramfs is really needed. Every time > I've seen a system boot on initramfs, the same goals could have been > achieved via booting on the real root filesystem and doing work during > initialization, which implies a lot less code, and is more maintainable, > and safer (if something fails early on).
I disagree, initramfs (and now enhanced upstream with tmpfs) is very useful for running in RAM without additional steps. There may not be a "real root", maybe we booted via PXE or an unsupported SCSI controller, etc. Without initramfs you'd have hacks like initrd -> switch to tmpfs -> more code, more complexity. Without initrd either you'd have even worse hacks with the kernel itself. - Lauri -- http://www.fastmail.fm - Choose from over 50 domains or use your own _______________________________________________ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
