On Jan 13, 2012, at 11:45 AM, Nathan Coulson wrote: >> To what end? I don't mean to be argumentative, but I really don't see why >> people see a non-initramfs boot as an important or useful goal. What >> features/benefits does it provide, other than you don't have to run cpio one >> time when building your system? > > simplicity, mostly. Just never felt like something I needed for a > fully working Linux System.
Thanks for the explanation. I think I understand now at least part of the
reason I'm on the other side of this.
--
I can't imagine running a system without tools like LVM. Yes, there's a new
package to install, but when I add that package I can drop my usage of
fdisk/parted and all the older, less flexible disk management tools. I honestly
only ever use partitioning tools to setup somewhere for the bootloader to live;
I don't even bother to put an old-school partition map on my other disks.
So for me LVM is "simple" and systems that don't support LVM are more
complicated to use because the tools are out-of-date and limiting.
--
Likewise I do a lot of VM-based work, and with KVM/qemu it's much nicer to boot
from a host-stored kernel and initramfs than to build an entire boot system
inside the VM. You also get the benefit of being able to update your kernel and
boot sequence once for all VMs, rather than in each one separately.
So for me an initramfs is "simple" because otherwise I'd have to change 15 VMs
when I swap in a new virtual disk driver.
--
Also note that you can store the initramfs separately from the kernel, so it's
not necessary to rebuild it when you update your kernel.
Zach
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