Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262267AbUJZNci (ORCPT ); Tue, 26 Oct 2004 09:32:38 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262263AbUJZNch (ORCPT ); Tue, 26 Oct 2004 09:32:37 -0400 Received: from mail.dif.dk ([193.138.115.101]:46303 "EHLO mail.dif.dk") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262267AbUJZNa6 (ORCPT ); Tue, 26 Oct 2004 09:30:58 -0400 Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 15:19:59 +0200 (CEST) From: Jesper Juhl To: hpa@zytor.com Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Is anyone using the load_ramdisk= option in the kernel still? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1744 Lines: 46 On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 hpa@zytor.com wrote: > Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 03:48:40 +0000 (UTC) > From: hpa@zytor.com > To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org > Subject: Is anyone using the load_ramdisk= option in the kernel still? > > Hi all, > > I've come to the conclusion that in order to stay backwards > compatible while moving root-mounting stuff to userspace, in the > initial patch everything in prepare_namespace() and south needs to be > fully supported in userspace. This looks perfectly doable, but is a > fair bit of work. > > The one piece of ugliness I've encountered has to do with the > load_ramdisk= option; this causes a ramdisk to be loaded from an > external device, usually a floppy. The ugliness has to do with the > fact that it requires the kernel itself to deduce the size of the > ramdisk, which is filesystem-specific. Although this code is > currently run for initrds as well, it doesn't need to, since the > kernel knows the size of an initrd. > > This code isn't complex by any means, but it's ugly and complex, and > I'm trying to make something a bit cleaner than just copying the > existing in-kernel code to userspace. > > So, in short: > > a) Does anyone use the load_ramdisk= option anymore, or is it > legitimate to drop? > I know Slackware Linux uses load_ramdisk= when you use floppies to start the install in the situations where booting from CD for some reason doesn't work. Slackware uses one boot disk and then 2 root disks in this case. -- Jesper Juhl - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/