On Fri, Sep 26, 2003 at 12:59:20PM -0600, Ed Schaller wrote: > 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.
All major distro's 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.
Why are you trying so hard to create an initrd image? I would just
compile the modules statically into the kernel and forget the whole
initrd thing altogether if I were you. The distro packagers have all
the time and resources they need to create their initrd images, which
is why they do it for their shipped versions, but the average Joe who
compiles his own kernel doesn't really need to do that.
> 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?
I typically use mkinitrd -k <kernel> -i <image> on the SuSE Enterprise
Servers that I set up at work. I've never created an initrd image for
a Debian box, since I typically just statically compile the required
modules right in.
Mike
--
.__________________________________________________________________.
Michael A. Halcrow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Security Engineer, IBM Linux Technology Center
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When all is said and done, more usually gets said than done.
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