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* This Fedora release ships with an initramfs tailored especially for your computer hardware. If you change your machine or significant hardware, you might have to boot with the "Rescue System" boot entry and execute "dracut --regenerate-all". If you want your initramfs to be hardware independent, execute "ln -s /dev/null /etc/dracut.conf.d/01-hostonly.conf".
* This Fedora release ships with an initramfs tailored especially for your computer hardware. If you change your machine or significant hardware, you might have to boot with the "Rescue System" boot entry and execute "dracut --regenerate-all". If you want your initramfs to be hardware independent, execute "ln -s /dev/null /etc/dracut.conf.d/99-hostonly.conf".


== Comments and Discussion ==
== Comments and Discussion ==

Revision as of 10:35, 7 February 2013

Dracut HostOnly

Summary

Only create "host-only" initramfs images. A generic fallback image should be installed by anaconda on installation/update and never ever be removed.

Owner

Current status

  • Targeted release: Fedora 19
  • Last updated: 2013-01-29
  • Percentage of completion: 20%

Detailed Description

Current initramfs images contain most of the kernel drivers to boot from any hardware. This results in a very big initramfs, which takes a long time to load on system start and a long time to create on kernel updates. Switching to host-only will improve the situation. To cope with hardware change, a boot entry "Rescue System" should be installed with a full fledged initramfs also containing debug tools. This boot entry can then be used to recover from hardware changes and also from unforseen software failure after updates.

Benefit to Fedora

Less /boot usage. Faster boot and updates. Full fledged rescue mode available.

Scope

  • dracut is already capable of producing host-only initramfs images, as well as rescue images
  • dracut has to implement "dracut --regenerate-all" to regenerate all normal initramfs with the current hardware
  • dracut has to ship "/usr/lib/dracut/dracut.conf.d/01-hostonly.conf"
  • dracut has to source config files from "/usr/lib/dracut/dracut.conf.d", although the same filenames in "/etc/dracut/dracut.conf.d" will have priority
  • dracut has to be changed to create the rescue initramfs image and the rescue boot entry, if it does not yet exist and call "yumdb set installonly keep kernel-<version>" for the kernel, which is used for the rescue image, otherwise kernel modules cannot be loaded in the real root.

How To Test

  • install F19
  • see two boot entries in grub: first one with the current kernel, second one with the rescue entry
  • /boot should contain one big initramfs belonging to the rescue image. The rest of the initramfs images should be way smaller in comparison.
  • every boot entry must be bootable
  • kernel upgrade must not remove the kernel used for the rescue boot entry

User Experience

User should see no difference, besides faster boot and updates. On boot failure, the user now has a "Rescue system" boot entry.

Dependencies

  • dracut

Contingency Plan

If the feature cannot be completed, we switch back to non-hostonly initramfs images, which is a configure switch in dracut and very easy to do.

Documentation

Release Notes

  • This Fedora release ships with an initramfs tailored especially for your computer hardware. If you change your machine or significant hardware, you might have to boot with the "Rescue System" boot entry and execute "dracut --regenerate-all". If you want your initramfs to be hardware independent, execute "ln -s /dev/null /etc/dracut.conf.d/99-hostonly.conf".

Comments and Discussion