Peter Humphrey wrote: > On Wednesday, 14 September 2022 23:09:59 BST Neil Bothwick wrote: >> On Wed, 14 Sep 2022 16:50:45 +0100, Peter Humphrey wrote: >>> I'm thinking of separating /usr onto its own partition so that I can >>> have it mounted read-only except while updating it. I'd prefer not to >>> have to make an init thingy, not having needed one up to now. Besides, >>> some machines have things like early-ucode or amd-uc. >> Most of this has already been answered, except for your final point. You >> can load more than one initrd at boot, so you can still apply microcode >> updates. For example, with systemd-boot >> >> title Desktop >> version 5.15.59-gentoo >> linux /vmlinuz-5.15.59-gentoo >> options root=LABEL=blah blah >> initrd /amd-uc.img >> initrd /initramfs-5.15.59-gentoo.img >> >> I use dracut to create the initrd, which is so straighforward even Dale >> can't break it ;-) > :) > > That seems to be the way to go then - even dinosaurs die out in the end. > Perhaps Dale will show us the command he referred to. > > Thank you all for your help. >
As I said, I do all mine by hand. I don't use make install etc. After I build my kernel, I copy it and name it something like this, from /boot. root@fireball / # ls -al /boot/kernel* -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 11638944 Nov 30 2021 /boot/kernel-5.10.46-2 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 11863664 Feb 18 2022 /boot/kernel-5.14.15-2 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 11881040 Aug 6 18:00 /boot/kernel-5.14.15-3 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 12128016 Jun 30 20:00 /boot/kernel-5.18.7-1 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 11167744 Nov 30 2021 /boot/kernel-5.6.7-1 root@fireball / # I basically put the version and at times a dash number on the end. Sometimes "-1" may work but I add a driver or something and the next is -2, the next -3 etc. For -3 above, I added a driver for a new network card as a example. Sometimes I clean out older dashed versions. Point is, it needs to start with kernel and go from there. You may have a different way of naming them. I think grub just looks for it to start with kernel. Once I get that done, I then build the init thingy. This is Neil's command that he posted. From my understanding, the kernel symlink needs to point to the correct kernel version. dracut --kver=$(cat include/config/kernel.release) That gives a init thingy with a somewhat generic name. I then rename it to match the kernel, looks something like this from /boot. root@fireball / # ls -al /boot/initramfs* -rw------- 1 root root 9310818 Nov 30 2021 /boot/initramfs-5.10.46-2.img -rw------- 1 root root 9093386 Nov 13 2021 /boot/initramfs-5.14.15-2.img -rw------- 1 root root 9485412 Aug 6 18:01 /boot/initramfs-5.14.15-3.img -rw------- 1 root root 9117155 Jun 30 22:57 /boot/initramfs-5.18.7-1.img -rw------- 1 root root 9310789 Nov 30 2021 /boot/initramfs-5.6.7-1.img root@fireball / # Once you get the two things to match, kernel and initramfs, then when you update grub, it will match them together and create the needed entries. I think at one point, I had one init for each kernel version without the dash part. I can't recall how I did that tho. To update grub, I use this command. grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg I actually put it in a file in /root and just run it. I just named it grub-update. That way I don't have to remember the option part. ;-) When it runs, just make sure it sees the kernel and a matching initramfs. It usually lists them in order. I don't update kernels that often. If you do it more often, others will have more automated ways to do things. They may use make install and other things that makes it a lot faster. I do it this way because it is not something I have to do often and I always get a good result. Plus, I keep the ones I know work well. It's been a while but I think Neil may have a more automated process. Heck, if he shares his step by step, I may convert. LOL I don't think I left anything out. :/ Dale :-) :-)
