Katola2:
> On Fri, Jan 01, 2016 at 06:27:10PM +0000, Simon Hobson wrote:
> > John Rigg <dev1@???> wrote:
> >
> > > Wasn't the original reason for having an initrd that the boot loader,
> > > probably LILO at the time, couldn't handle a kernel image above a
> > > certain size?
> >
> > I suspect you are thinking of the problem that it couldn't access
> > sectors past a certain point due to limitation in the BIOS - that
> > was the reason for a separate /boot which meant you could
> > guarantee to have any future kernel within the range accessible
> > to LILO.

A small little /boot first in disk has never given me any problem,
and have apparantly saved me from hassles others have had. You don't
even have to have it mounted unless you change kernel or the like.

I don't see how I could gain anything from not having it, it is a very
pragmatical ting to have.

You wouldn't think of moving the boot record to some nostandard
location, do you ?

...
> > If you use LVM, MD (raid), disk controllers needing a kernel
> > module, or one of a few other things - then you can have a
> > catch-22 situation where the kernel needs to load a module to
> > access

MD works perfectly fine without initrd. If you don't use autodetect,
then simply supply md=2,/dev/sda2,/dev/sdb2 (adj. for your system) to
your boot cmdline. If you want your / to be a partition within a md
device, you're in for a little more pain, but why do you want to hurt
yourself.

The only time I needed a driver for a disk controller as a module was
for a scsi raid which wasn't supported by the kernel, but that was a
rather special case. Other than that you (as a local admin) can just
as well have the driver in the kernel binary.

I havn't tested booting from a lvm partition.

But sane advice is: keep your boot simple and clean. If you need a few
extra small partitions for that, who cares ?

...
> If your root fs does not change every five minutes, you can have a
> custom kernel with ext4 and a few other drivers compiled in, and get
> rid of initramfs altogether. Then, the usage that has been done of
> initramfs in the last few years is just an overkill, IMHO.

Ack.

Regards,
/Karl Hammar

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