Package: yaird Version: 0.0.12-18 Severity: wishlist Asking myself whether the memory occupied by initramfs is freed after the real init process has taken over, I found a mention in the kernel docs (filesystems/ramfs-rootfs-initramfs.txt) that files from the initramfs have to be deleted manually before switching root in order to free up the space, and that there exists a helper program to do this rather tricky job, namely utils/run_init.c from klibc.
However, with yaird, the relevant nuke_dir function in exec/run_init.c has been replaced by an empty stub since over a year ago (2005-03-01), reasoning that nuking of rootfs has not been tested. Of course, the few megabytes currently wasted by an initrd generated with yaird would in no way justify the use of a potentially disastrous function which nukes the user's entire system upon boot. [ Compare my numbers from /proc/meminfo booting to single user mode... [ [ without nuke_dir (two boots): [ Active: 21152 kB [ Active: 21164 kB [ [ with nuke_dir (two boots): [ Active: 16728 kB [ Active: 16732 kB [ [ # gzip -d < /boot/initrd.img-2.6.18-alcyone | cpio -t >/dev/null [ 10227 blocks [ [ On the contrary, the initramfs-tools (not that I have ever been employing them) seem to be happily nuking along by default; the included init script calls run-init from klibc-utils, which in turn invokes the run_init function from usr/kinit/run-init/runinitlib.c, which nearly exactly resembles exec/run_init.c of yaird (with the only notable exception of removing the die function). I see no reasons why the code could not be trusted after nitpicking examination. After all, deletion of rootfs seems to be advised by the kernel author(s) of initramfs. Could you reexamine the whole situation, and maybe consider enabling the nuke_dir function in the long run? Regards, Peter -- System Information: Debian Release: testing/unstable APT prefers testing APT policy: (400, 'testing'), (50, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental') Architecture: i386 (i686) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-alcyone Locale: LANG=C, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (charmap=ISO-8859-15) Versions of packages yaird depends on: ii cpio 2.6-17 GNU cpio -- a program to manage ar ii dash 0.5.3-3 The Debian Almquist Shell ii libc6 2.3.6.ds1-4 GNU C Library: Shared libraries ii libhtml-template-perl 2.8-1 HTML::Template : A module for usin ii libparse-recdescent-perl 1.94.free-3 Generates recursive-descent parser ii perl 5.8.8-6.1 Larry Wall's Practical Extraction yaird recommends no packages. -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
