[ale] Gentoo Linux: initrd

[Michael Hirsch]

On Fri, 2002-08-30 at 10:57, Keith Hopkins wrote:
> Michael Hirsch wrote:
> > On Thu, 2002-08-29 at 17:56, Keith Hopkins wrote:
> > 
> >>Hey Ya'll,
> >>
> >>  I'm almost finished with my first Gentoo Linux install, trying to put some more pep into several aging K6-II/500 machines.
> >>
> >>I'm completed the kernel and module compile, but I still need to make a initrd and setup grub (oh, were forth art thou LILO?) before I can ever reboot the system.
> >>
> >>Does Gentoo have a handy utility to create/setup the initrd? (like mk_initrd in SuSE)
> > 
> > 
> > Ordinarily I wouldn't expect you to need this.  Since the whole point of
> > gentoo is to customize your install for you exact hardware, I would
> > expect that your kernel would have any devices required for boot in it. 
> > initrd is only needed for the "one size fits all" type of kernels used
> > by normal distributions.
> > 
> > Is there a particular reason you left some essential module out of your
> > kernel?
> 
> Habbit, I would say is the largest factor (working with SuSE the most).  The ability to rmmod/insmod the driver for a hung device is compelling (although not practical for "essential" modules).  Reduced kernel size, since I have in tha past before I switched to using modules, built kernels too large to boot!  Is that still a problem?
> 
> So, I guess you are all saying, "go ahead and build it in the kernel!"  OK.

I'm only saying that for devices that you need to get booted.  After
that, let modprobe take over.  If you need the device to boot, then you
probably can never unload it anyway.

For instance, if you boot from a SCSI hard drive, you could put SCSI in
your initrd, but why?  You can't unload the driver and reload it because
your root partition is on it.  For a sound driver, sure, make it a
loadable module.  Even if you figure it will always be loaded, in an
emergency you can unload it.

--Michael


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