Re: [PATCH] Driver Core: devtmpfs - kernel-maintained tmpfs-based/dev

From: Phil Turmel
Date: Fri Aug 07 2009 - 12:14:19 EST


Greg KH wrote:
On Thu, Aug 06, 2009 at 12:20:58PM -0400, David Dillow wrote:
On Thu, 2009-08-06 at 17:46 +0200, Andi Kleen wrote:
Greg KH <greg@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
It makes the userspace boot process much simpler and easier to maintain,
as well as providing a way to handle rescue disks and images trivially,
and it makes the kernel _less_ dependant on the early userspace bootup
scripts.
As a initrd less kernel user I can really only agree: getting rid
of the udev-in-initrd requirement would be a big step forward
in usability. Typically I always have to pre populate a on disk /dev manually first to get my kernels to boot.
If you use mount by label or UUID, you still need udev (or other tools)
in the initrd to find the right disk, correct?

Yes, you would.


Might be straying off-topic here, but I find software raid to be particularly useful in this case. I've been using it on my home server for a few years now, including through the transition from ide to libata. The kernel autostart for md devices has been rock-solid, and successfully hides the real device name. No initramfs required.

You might want to adapt the md+lvm setup from the gentoo docs [1], even if you only have one disk (degraded mirror). The only gotcha I've encountered was forgetting to set up grub after replacing a failed disk, and it happened to be first in line in the BIOS. Didn't notice 'till an extended power outage forced a reboot.

Phil

[1] http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86+raid+lvm2-quickinstall.xml
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