Message-ID: <442175BA.6000207@zytor.com>
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 08:05:14 -0800
From: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
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To: Jeff Garzik <jeff@garzik.org>
CC: Michael Neuling <mikey@neuling.org>, klibc@zytor.com,
       Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
       miltonm@bga.com, Al Viro <viro@ftp.linux.org.uk>
Subject: Re: [klibc] Re: [PATCH] initramfs: CPIO unpacking fix
References: <20060216183745.50cc2bf6.mikey@neuling.org>	<20060217160621.99b0ffd4.mikey@neuling.org>	<20060322061220.8414067A70@ozlabs.org> <4420F93C.1050705@garzik.org>
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Jeff Garzik wrote:
> 
> For the kernel, I would regard that as needless code...  Coding for a 
> chain of CPIO archives overwriting each other seems like overengineering.
> 

No, it's actually significant.  The ability to compose initramfs 
contents from multiple sources is one of the major improvements over initrd.

For example, people has asked that kinit should be able to be called 
from user-provided (initrd-loaded) initramfs code.  The easiest way to 
do that is to have the in-kernel module have:

	/init -> /kinit
	/kinit

... and allow /init to be overwritten.

	-hpa
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