Xen devel - Mar 2006 - RE: [RFC][PATCH] create an initrd for dom0 in install.shscript

Here is the usage for 

Fedora
usage: mkinitrd [--version] [-v] [-f] [--preload <module>]
       [--omit-scsi-modules] [--omit-raid-modules] [--omit-lvm-modules]
       [--with=<module>] [--image-version] [--fstab=<fstab>]
[--nocompress]
       [--builtin=<module>] [--nopivot] <initrd-image>
<kernel-version>

       (ex: mkinitrd /boot/initrd-2.2.5-15.img 2.2.5-15)

SUSE SLES9
        Create initial ramdisk images that contain all kernel modules
        needed in the early boot process, before the root file system
        becomes available. This usually includes SCSI and/or RAID
        modules, a file system module for the root file system, or
        a network interface driver module for dhcp.

        mkinitrd [options] [root_dir]

        options:
          -h               This Text.
          -k "kernel list" List of kernel images for which initrd
files
                           are created. Defaults to all kernels found
                           in /boot.
          -i "initrd list" List of file names for the initrd; position
                           have match to "kernel list". Defaults to
all
                           all kernels found in /boot.
          -m "module list" Modules to include in initrd. Defaults to
the
                           INITRD_MODULES variable in
/etc/sysconfig/kernel.
          -b boot_dir      Boot directory. Defaults to /boot.
          -d root_device   Root device. Defaults to the device from
which
                           the root_dir is mounted. Overrides the
rootdev
                           enviroment variable if set.
          -s size          Add splash animation and bootscreen to
initrd.
          -t tmp_dir       Temporary directory. Defaults to /var/tmp.
          -D interface     Run dhcp on the specified interface.
          -I interface     Configure the specified interface statically.
          -a acpi_dsdt     Attach compiled ACPI DSDT (Differentiated
System
                           Description Table) to initrd. This replaces
the
                           DSDT of the BIOS. Defaults to the ACPI_DSDT
                           variable in /etc/sysconfig/kernel.
          -S               Load policy file for SELinux if exist.
        root_dir:          The directory the root partition is mounted
on.
                           Defaults to "/".
> For what it is worth, here is the break down of the Mandriva tool.
> 
> 
> 
> NAME
>        mkinitrd - creates initial ramdisk images for preloading
modules
> 
> SYNOPSIS
>        mkinitrd [--version] [-v] [-f]
>                 [--preload=module] [--with=module]
>                 [--omit-scsi-modules] [--omit-raid-modules]
>                 [--image-version] [--fstab=fstab] [--nocompress]
>                 [--builtin=module] [--nopivot] [--noudev]
>                 [--allow-missing] [--tmpdir=tmpdir]
>                 [--initrdfs=fs] [--dsdt[=dsdt.aml]]
>                 [--lvm-version=1|2] [--force-usb]
>                 image kernel-version
> 
> 
> 
> 	-Sean
> 
> --
> Sean Dague
> IBM Linux Technology Center                     email: japh@us.ibm.com
> Open Hypervisor Team                           alt: sldague@us.ibm.com
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Thanks.

Does anyone have any idea what the best way of determining what distro
is installed is?

Harry


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* Harry Butterworth <harry@hebutterworth.freeserve.co.uk> [2006-03-30
14:33]:
> Thanks.
> 
> Does anyone have any idea what the best way of determining what distro
> is installed is?
I think /etc/issue is a good place to start.

% cat /etc/issue
Ubuntu 5.10 "Breezy Badger" \n \l

-- 
Ryan Harper
Software Engineer; Linux Technology Center
IBM Corp., Austin, Tx
(512) 838-9253   T/L: 678-9253
ryanh@us.ibm.com

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Harry Butterworth wrote:  [Thu Mar 30 2006, 03:09:44PM
EST]
> Does anyone have any idea what the best way of determining what distro
> is installed is?
Test for the existence of the following files:

    /etc/redhat-release
    /etc/SuSE-release
    /etc/gentoo-release
    /etc/debian_version
        - in this case, check for ubuntu by reading /etc/lsb-release,
          which will contain something like:
            DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
            DISTRIB_RELEASE=5.10
            DISTRIB_CODENAME=breezy
            DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu (The Breezy Badger Release)"

Aron

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On Thu, Mar 30, 2006 at 04:20:52PM -0500, Aron Griffis
wrote:
> Harry Butterworth wrote:  [Thu Mar 30 2006, 03:09:44PM EST]
> > Does anyone have any idea what the best way of determining what distro
> > is installed is?
> 
> Test for the existence of the following files:
> 
>     /etc/redhat-release
>     /etc/SuSE-release
>     /etc/gentoo-release
>     /etc/debian_version
>         - in this case, check for ubuntu by reading /etc/lsb-release,
>           which will contain something like:
>             DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
>             DISTRIB_RELEASE=5.10
>             DISTRIB_CODENAME=breezy
>             DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu (The Breezy Badger
Release)"
Is this really the best way to go about this? it seems to me that this
problem (creating a kernel + initrd pair in a way that matches the
current distro) is inherently distro specific, and we should be using
the distro-specific tools to do it - e.g., make-kpkg on debian. Any
other approach seems too brittle.

Cheers,
Muli
-- 
Muli Ben-Yehuda
http://www.mulix.org | http://mulix.livejournal.com/


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On Fri, 2006-03-31 at 23:12 +0300, Muli Ben-Yehuda
wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 30, 2006 at 04:20:52PM -0500, Aron Griffis wrote:
> > Harry Butterworth wrote:  [Thu Mar 30 2006, 03:09:44PM EST]
> > > Does anyone have any idea what the best way of determining what
distro
> > > is installed is?
> > 
> > Test for the existence of the following files:
> > 
> >     /etc/redhat-release
> >     /etc/SuSE-release
> >     /etc/gentoo-release
> >     /etc/debian_version
> >         - in this case, check for ubuntu by reading /etc/lsb-release,
> >           which will contain something like:
> >             DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
> >             DISTRIB_RELEASE=5.10
> >             DISTRIB_CODENAME=breezy
> >             DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu (The Breezy Badger
Release)"
> 
> Is this really the best way to go about this? it seems to me that this
> problem (creating a kernel + initrd pair in a way that matches the
> current distro) is inherently distro specific, and we should be using
> the distro-specific tools to do it - e.g., make-kpkg on debian. Any
> other approach seems too brittle.
It was my impression that make-kpkg on debian doesn''t create an initrd
but that the initrd is created when the kernel-image is installed.

Calling the distro mkinitrd script will hide all the distro specific
aspects of initrd creation---the only problem is that the interface to
mkinitrd is not standard across distros so I''ll have to write a
wrapper.

I think we should leave it to the distro package maintainers to do a
perfect integration with their distro but I think for developers working
with unstable (especially newcomers) it is useful if the default build
actually comes up with something that will run---which now requires
generation of an initrd.

An alternative would be for the distro package maintainers to push their
package build stuff upstream to make it possible to build the distro
packages directly from the unstable sources.

Harry.


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On Mon, Apr 03, 2006 at 11:18:09AM +0100, Harry Butterworth wrote:
> An alternative would be for the distro package maintainers to push their
> package build stuff upstream to make it possible to build the distro
> packages directly from the unstable sources.
That sounds like the right approach.

Cheers,
Muli
-- 
Muli Ben-Yehuda
http://www.mulix.org | http://mulix.livejournal.com/


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>> An alternative would be for the distro package maintainers to push
their
>> package build stuff upstream to make it possible to build the distro
>> packages directly from the unstable sources.
>
>That sounds like the right approach.
We had RPM-building stuff contributed a while back but i don''t know if
it''s
used. We also had patches for the debian build system but that was mainly 
to show us the requirements that build system had of our source tree.

There was talk of integrating the build systems properly (then we could 
have a nightly updated debian / yum / urpmi / whatever repo of -unstable, 
etc, etc) into our source tree but we didn''t quite get there.
It''s easier
for the packagers if they can easily tweak the package-related scripting 
themselves, and we weren''t entirely convinced it was a good idea for us
to
take on package-related code anyhow. That said, it does seem like it would 
have pretty nice benefits.

Cheers,
Mark

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