linux-kernel - Re: The policy on initramfs decompression failure

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Message-ID: <20090114054022.GA11153@elte.hu>
Date:	Wed, 14 Jan 2009 06:40:22 +0100
From:	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>
To:	Alain Knaff <alain@...ff.lu>
Cc:	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
	Al Viro <viro@....linux.org.uk>
Subject: Re: The policy on initramfs decompression failure

* Alain Knaff <alain@...ff.lu> wrote:

> There is also the additional issue that continuing to boot might hide 
> the original error message. [...]

I have hit this pointless panic during testing, that's the motivation for 
this whole question. The initrd was unimportant in that bootup - but that 
is generally true of bzImage bootups.

And your argument makes little sense: if there is something wrong then one 
looks at the logs _anyway_. Are you suggesting that all warnings that 
signal some potential badness should result in a panic? That is 
nonsensical.

What you seem to be arguing for is to introduce a kernel option that says 
"panic on warnings" - so that folks cannot miss warnings. _That_ would be 
a fair argument.

Panics are rarely good, unless the user asks for it, period. We've been 
flipping over BUG_ON()s to WARN_ON() everywhere where it matters in 
practice.

	Ingo
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