On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 10:22 AM, Greg KH <gre...@gentoo.org> wrote: > On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 03:08:27PM +0000, Ciaran McCreesh wrote: >> On Wed, 14 Mar 2012 08:04:31 -0700 >> Greg KH <gre...@gentoo.org> wrote: >> > Not always, no, it isn't obvious that something didn't start up >> > correctly, or that it didn't fully load properly. Some programs later >> > on recover and handle things better. >> >> So why not work on fixing those things, since they're clearly symptoms >> of a larger "oops, we have too much coupling" problem, instead of >> forcing a workaround onto large numbers of users? > > I seriously doubt there are a "large number" of users here that have > this issue. >
The majority of users should not encounter any difficulty due to this issue. Those that are doing special things that require careful mounting, etc should be sufficiently competent to deal with this issue without any trouble at all, especially given the various solution paths. > And even if there is, again, there is a simple solution that Gentoo > provides for this issue, see the earlier initrd solution that we support > today. > Gentoo provides a solution with genkernel, dracut provides a solution, even the linux kernel itself provides a solution (in my view the easiest solution at that). > I'll go back to lurking now, and getting stuff done, like everyone else > on this thread should be doing, instead of complaining (this is -dev, > not -users...) > > greg k-h > Oh, please Greg, do continue to stay engaged, I enjoy your perspective very much. I just wanted to drop this simple fact in there. This has been coming for several years now AND the linux kernel has been using an initramfs for every boot, every time for a long time now, all 2.6 and up as I understand it. If the initramfs is empty, well the kernel is smart enough to fall back on "legacy" boot process. If you care to read about it, its all contained locally if your kernel source in the file linux/Documentation/filesystems/ramfs-rootfs-initramfs.txt Its a great read, sure to entertain and enlighten. It saved my bacon a few times when mdadm switched to the new metadata format. Once I began to learn about what the initramfs made possible, entire new worlds of possibility appeared (and I was not even on drugs!). It's actually something of a surprise to me that there are people upset about this change, since it cleans things up a bit while also giving people that want and/or need it, a great deal of power and control over the boot process that was not nearly as easy before. I do believe Gentoo, as a community/volunteer-run and super-power-user distribution, should be careful, a bit wary, and seriously consider the decisions made by our corporate colleagues (we do have the mandate to maintain our independence). However, simply because RHEL, SUSE, etc are corporation controlled distributions does not mean they are bad or trying to control/ruin the rest of the distros. Anyway, I merely thought I would place my commentary on this situation here for posterity. Since I have an opinion, I thought I would share it for better or worse. -- Matthew W. Summers Gentoo Foundation Inc.
