On Mon, 13 Dec 2010 03:31:44 -0500 (EST), H. R. Oberhage wrote: > > This is also the answer to you question what I use 'it' for, namely simply > LILO.
As I suspected. First of all, as Ben is well aware, I am not a maintainer for initramfs-tools, udev, or any other Debian package. I'm just a fellow lilo user, and therefore, an interested party. The translation of a root specification from user-space notation (root=/dev/whatever) to kernel-space notation (root=xxxx, where xxxx is a three- or four-digit hexadecimal number representing the major and minor number of the device) is something that lilo has always done. There is nothing new here. Adding udev to the mix is what has complicated things. There may be other boot loaders which do the same thing. I also am opposed to deprecating the ability of initramfs-tools to handle a hexadecimal numeric root specification. While the powers that be figure out how best to handle this type of root specification, I would like to call your attention to a work-around for the problem that will get you up and running in the meantime: use a UUID specification. For example, on my system I use ... boot=/dev/disk/by-uuid/055d446a-977d-4aa6-877d-62c716f5e85a ... root="UUID=055d446a-977d-4aa6-877d-62c716f5e85a" in /etc/lilo.conf. In this example, the lilo stage 1 boot loader is installed in the boot sector of a primary partition, which is also the root partition. (It happens to correspond to /dev/sda2 on my system.) Note that "boot" must be a block special device or a symbolic link to a block special device, as above, but "root" can be a quoted UUID specification, as supported by /etc/fstab. When the root device is specified this way, lilo does not do any translation. The kernel command line sees ... root=UUID=055d446a-977d-4aa6-877d-62c716f5e85a ... which gets you around the problem for now. Respectfully submitted, -- .''`. Stephen Powell : :' : `. `'` `- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-kernel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/2056035689.1026734.1292241127784.javamail.r...@md01.wow.synacor.com
