linux-ext4 - Re: What is e2initrd

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Date:	Wed, 11 Apr 2012 18:19:05 -0400
From:	Phillip Susi <psusi@...ntu.com>
To:	Ted Ts'o <tytso@....edu>
CC:	Eric Sandeen <sandeen@...hat.com>,
	ext4 development <linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: What is e2initrd_helper?

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On 04/11/2012 02:27 PM, Ted Ts'o wrote:
> Debian used to have a system where we could transparently update the
> root file system to use ext4 file system features as part of the
> initrd.
> 
> At one point I had hopes that we could fix up the boot scripts so that
> if an initrd was present, we could run e2fsck out of the initrd, so we
> wouldn't have to play games with mounting the file system read-only.
> So at one point the plan was this program would also extract all of
> /etc/fstab for the initrd, and other things that might be useful
> before the root file system was mounted.
> 
> I've since decided that this would involve getting fsck all-too-bound
> up in distribution-specific init systems, and might actually aid and
> abet the further dominance of GNOME-OS (or plymouth/upstart; I dispise
> all of the modern init/initscripts systems equally), so I've since
> stopped trying to implement things in that particular design
> direction.

So does this mean it is now cruft and should be removed at some point?

> It's why I'll be abandoning Ubuntu when the new Ivy Bridge laptops
> become available, and switching not to Fedora, but to Debian Testing
> --- but I'm sure Mark Shuttleworth really doesn't care what distro
> people like me choose to use....   :-)

AFAIK, Ubuntu uses Debian's initramfs system... are you saying this is not the case?  If so, what's the difference?  When I attended the last UDS there was actually a push coming from the arm folks to do away with the initrd on systems that do not require it ( no LVM ) to accelerate boot time by not wasting time loading another file, which apparently is rather slow on the arm boot loader.


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