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From: Peter Samuelson <peter@cadcamlab.org>
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Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 17:49:06 -0600 (CST)
To: "T. Camp" <campt@openmars.com>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] mutliple root devs (take II)
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[Tracy Camp]
> I was unsure if it was okay to be using kmalloc during early stages
> of init/main.c so I decided to follow the example allready set and
> just use a static array - can anyone advise on being able to do this
> dynamically?

Have a static 'char *' somewhere.  In the "root=" callback function,
just set this variable.  Do not parse it until you are ready to
actually mount root, then just parse one dev at a time.  No allocation
needed.

Note that this approach doesn't support the "multiple root=" feature,
which brings us to...

> I guess I can't think of any really good reason why having multiple
> root= is a necissary feature.

Agreed, and there *is* good reason not to support this, since it is
useful to be able to override a root= given in a config file.


> Yeah you would need to patch lilo as well to handle the new syntax
> amongst other things.

Hmm.  LILO shouldn't care, but it does, because it has a 'root='
parameter which it handles specially, by patching the 16-bit device
number into the kernel image at runtime.  Your patch should be fully
functional, though, as long as people just use 'append="root=..."'
instead of simply 'root=...'.  The append= forces LILO not to treat the
root dev specially.  (This tip brought to you by the devfs docs.)

Peter
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