linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v3] init/main.c: add warning when file specified in rdinit is inaccessible

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Message-ID: <b21e7e2b-b9cd-4373-9eae-cf25209cf55b@pengutronix.de>
Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2025 07:41:17 +0200
From: Ahmad Fatoum <a.fatoum@...gutronix.de>
To: Lillian Berry <lillian@...r-ark.net>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
 Al Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>, Leonard Goehrs <lgo@...gutronix.de>,
 "kernel@...gutronix.de" <kernel@...gutronix.de>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3] init/main.c: add warning when file specified in rdinit
 is inaccessible

Hello Lillian,

On 08.10.25 05:30, Lillian Berry wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Tue, Oct 7, 2025, at 10:57 AM, Ahmad Fatoum wrote:
>> On 7/7/25 11:14 AM, Lillian Berry wrote:
>>> Avoid silently ignoring the initramfs when the file specified in rdinit
>>> is not usable. This prints an error that clearly explains the issue
>>> (file was not found, vs initramfs was not found).
>>
>> I have a system that works just fine without an initramfs, but now the
>> kernel warns me about it:
>>
>> [    2.805602] check access for rdinit=/init failed: -2, ignoring
>>
>> I suppose that's unintended and the code here should actually check that
>> there is an initrd at all before checking for the rdinit?
> 
> This isn't directly unintended. This message informs the user their
> specified rdinit= binary was not able to run, regardless of the reason.
> 
> It would be good to check presence of initrd and print a more specific
> message such as "rdinit=/init specified but no initrd present".

I didn't explicitly set rdinit=/init on my kernel command line though:

  loglevel=7 root=/dev/mmcblk1p1 rootwait=10 rootfstype=ext4

So ramdisk_execute_command had the default value it was initialized with.

Maybe rdinit_setup should set a flag or something to discern the default
case?

Tanks,
Ahmad



> 
> Kindly,
> Lillian
> 


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