On Tue, 27 Jun 2017 at 22:57:16 -0700
Rick Moen <rick@???> wrote:

> Quoting John Morris (jmorris@???):
>
>> Nope, that negates one of the principle reasons to use an initramfs in
>> the first place. You assume the stock kernel can see the drive where
>> you intend to put this new partition; one of the big drivers of initrd
>> in the first place was exotic hardware, etc. so GRUB uses BIOS
>> (including extension ROMs on controller cards) to load both the kernel
>> and the initrd so it can take whatever steps are needed, i.e load the
>> right modules, start lvm, setup encrypted filesystem magic, etc. to make
>> the main drive/partitions/etc. visible. Your idea could deal with most
>> everything that didn't need a kernel module but totally fails at that
>> task.
>

> Step 1.  Compile a kernel that includes inline all key drivers including
>          those needed to find the root filesystem.
> Step 2.  Profit!

>
> That's the old-school method.

It cannot work if what you need to do is feeding the HD controller some
proprietary firmware that cannot legally be embedded in the GPL driver.


Alessandro