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  • From: Casey Harkins <charkins AT upl.cs.wisc.edu>
  • To: sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [SM-Discuss] initrd contents
  • Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2003 15:29:02 -0500 (CDT)



What exactly do we need in the initial ramdisk on our installation cd?

I'm working on a script to automatically generate isos from a running smgl
system. I'm planning on offering a few modes of operation. The first mode
would generate an installation iso. Another mode will generate a livecd
based on the current smgl installation.

I've got a script completed to automatically generate the initital
ramdisk. Our current initrd contains a number of files from different
spells, but doesn't include all files from those spells. This makes it
difficult to be automatically generated. What I've done is generate a list
of file patterns to be copied based on our current initrd image.

However, I think our current initrd image is bloated. Most if not all of
the programs are dynamically linked, requiring the shared libraries to be
included as well.

My proposal: replace most of these utilities with busybox. Keep in mind
that this is only the initial ramdisk, not the root filesystem of the
installation cd itself. Out of the current commands included in the
initrd, the only ones that are not provided by busybox are:

less
depmod
ldconfig
modprobe - however it does provide insmod, rmmod and lsmod
dialog
ldd
nano
bash

The absense of bash and dialog will break the current initrd menu, either
these will need to be included (preferably as static binaries) or they
need to be replaced with something else.

modprobe may not be necessary since the other module commands are included
in busybox.

The current initrd also contains the /usr/share/terminfo/l directory and
the /usr/share/tabset directory. Should the entire terminfo directory be
included, or just the /l directory?

Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated! On to the iso creation
step...

-casey





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