Ok, I thought I'd try to get cramfs working again as an initrd. I have failed totally. I do what seems like should work:
mkcramfs dir file Then load the file as an initrd. It fails with a kernel panic every time. Usually after a error -3 decompressing or something.=20 The file can be mounted in a running system just fine. cramfsfsck reports no errors. The dir used works perfectly as a romfs initrd. Searching the net hasn't been very useful either except for one group announcing bitterly that they are switching from cramfs back to ext2 for initrd because the kernel developers have "broken" it three times since 2.4.18. That's great to hear, but, debian uses cramfs for their initrd's regularly. They also patch their stock kernels massively. As of yet I have been unable to get a list of all the patches they apply, but did get the whole big patch. I guess I'll try that next. I have already had to patch 2.4.22 because the stock version's kernel threads do not release their file descriptors when a pivot root occurs, so the initrd cannot be umounted or freed. This was broken in 2.4.22-pre3 but not fixed before the release. After much searching I did find a patch for it, but nothing mainstream. I find it rather hard to believe that the initrd system is being so generally ignored and broken by the kernel developers as most (every?) major linux distro uses initrd's all the time (redhat, debian at least) and initrd + pivot root has been pushed as the replacement for things like the special nfs root boot system. Does anyone have any experience with cramfs? Any ideas/answers? Thanks. >>>------> -- +-------------+-----------------------+---------------+ | Ed Schaller | Dark Mist Networking | psuedoshroom | +-------------+-----------------------+---------------+
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