On 09/15/2011 05:44 PM, Yair K. wrote: > extlinux-update currently extracts root system by looking at /etc/fstab .
ftr: it only takes it from fstab if it's not already set otherwise. > Problem is that / mounting can use LABEL= or UUID= arguments which are > unsupported by the vanilla kernel. debians kernel do support it and users should not have label or uuid in fstab if they cannot be used in the rest of the system, that not just includes mount but also initramfs. > There are also more complicated cases of > mismatches**. This can result in an system where the default config does not > boot. right, but that's not fixable/detectable, we cannot symantically know what the users system is supposed to consist of (see below). > At the very least, the install should warn against the LABEL/UUID cases. i don't think so. debian uses uuid by default, that would give the user a warning *by default*. rather, those people that leave the debian patch should know what they are doing. > It may also be possible to avoid this using a different extraction method: i'm always interested in improving things, of course, however... > e.g. look at /proc/mounts instead (since it indicates what the kernel sees > past the userland mapping of LABEL or UUID), ignore FS=rootfs entry if there, > extract the first word mounting to '/', and 'readlink -f' it to get the > result > (since it can be e.g. /dev/root symlink). One should examine how this method > would interact with initrds. this is not improving, as it will completely fail to work when you want to run extlinux-update from a chrooted system (that one e.g. has booted with a live system for rescue purposes) as there the *mounted* rootfs is not the rootfs of the target system. oiow, requireing the target system to be running in order to configure the bootloader is a noop as it introduces a chicken-egg problem once you have to rescue a system, that is not what the bootloaders do in debian. Regards, Daniel -- Address: Daniel Baumann, Donnerbuehlweg 3, CH-3012 Bern Email: daniel.baum...@progress-technologies.net Internet: http://people.progress-technologies.net/~daniel.baumann/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
