linux-kernel - Re: Linux 2.6.20-rc7

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Date:	Wed, 31 Jan 2007 19:31:33 -0800 (PST)
From:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To:	S.ÃaÄlar Onur <caglar@...dus.org.tr>
cc:	lkml <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>, Andrew Morton <akpm@...l.org>,
	Peter Anvin <hpa@...or.com>,
	Mark Huang <mlhuang@...Princeton.EDU>,
	Al Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>
Subject: Re: Linux 2.6.20-rc7

On Thu, 1 Feb 2007, S.ÃaÄlar Onur wrote:
> 
> I think i found the cause of the problem, initramfs can't handle hardlinks 
> anymore (which works with 2.6.18), copying same /sbin/busybox binary with 
> different names into initramfs (which ends ups with 50 MB image) or using 
> symbolic ones instead of hards seems works.

Ok, it would still be interesting to hear what triggered this.

There's really only two initramfs-related changes in the whole 2.6.20 
development series that I can see, and neither of them are even _remotely_ 
likely to cause this, afaik. We have:

 - commit 8d610dd52dd1da696e199e4b4545f33a2a5de5c6

   "Make sure we populate the initroot filesystem late enough"

(but "late enough" is still _way_ before we actually mount it, so ..) and

 - commit 2e591bbc0d563e12f5a260fbbca0df7d5810910e

   "Make initramfs printk a warning on incorrect cpio type"

and the latter is just a build-time sanity-check.

Since 2.6.18, there's been a couple more, but none of them look even 
remotely likely either. Which is why it really would be good if you can 
"git bisect" this behaviour.

There _was_ a hardlink-related thing some time ago, but that was back in 
May, and before 2.6.18. So if it worked for you in 2.6.18, I don't see 
that being it.

I've added some initramfs people to the Cc: in case somebody has better 
ideas, but in the absense of that, it really would be good to do that 
bisection. Also, you might want to double-check that your cpio actually 
generates a good initramfs image (it that it's not some user-mode upgrade 
that caused it to stop working).

		Linus