On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 10:12:23AM +0100, marc wrote:
> And here is where the "re-invent it poorly" comes in: Linux
> has shifted some of this work into the initrd or initramfs. My
> view is that the initramfs is a mess:
>

>   - it differs between distributions
>   - it is brittle to update (a complex build tool is needed)
>   - it is redundant (needs to copy loads of files around. Maybe
>       not an issue on the 100TB system you have, but the smartwatch or
>       smartbulb builder might see it differently)
>   - configurations are duplicated, hardcoded or non-obvious.
>   - it is opaque - not easy to look in to with ls.
>   - its system recovery utilities are deficient
>   - as are the interactive tools

This is probably drifting somewhat from the (/,/usr) topic,
but I have one problem with eliminating initramfs: CPU firmware
update. I much prefer to avoid initramfs, and always used to
compile my own kernels with the necessary 'boot' modules installed.
But then there seems to be no easy way to patch the CPU firmware
which is needed not least for security: you need to reboot with the
new firmware runing, and initramfs is the simplest existing way to achieve that.

I posted much the same comment on this list long ago and had no
reaction.

Are people not risking security, not to mention performance and maybe
bugs if you don't use initramfs or something else to update the firmware?

What am I missing? Is there a way to update CPU firwmare on the fly?

ael