Talk:Initramfs/Guide

Merge this article with parent Initramfs article
The article covers general information and has duplicated information on another articles (Dracut, Genkernel, Initramfs). Here, the information don't give added value. Therefore, I propose we merged this article with the Initramfs article. The quality will be improved because the information will be factored and it will better for both readers and contributors (less hyperlinks, informations, easier for updates, clearer reading). You can view the merge I did, on this page: https://wiki.gentoo.org/index.php?title=Initramfs&oldid=577024.

-- Feng (talk) 17:08, 7 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Hi Feng, I can see why you'd want to do something like this, however I'm okay with having a guide article present as well (this "Guide" article was been migrated from the Initramfs HOWTO that was maintained by the old Gentoo Documentation team. There are several other Guide sub-articles present on the wiki. I did some work in the past to rename these articles to the title of "Guide" instead of "HOWTO". I view the parent Initramfs article as a meta article (like a virtual) that is used to point readers to more information... With that being said, I would definitely be on board with cleaning this article up a bit (like removing the duplicate Genkernel and other parts). --Maffblaster (talk) 17:47, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Dracut
The section regarding DRACUT_MODULES=... seems to need an update. It's confusing for first time users. I have absolutely no experience with initramfs; otherwise I would do it myself.

--Charles17 (talk) 14:45, 6 June 2017 (UTC)


 * DRACUT_MODULES is obsolete. Removed --Grknight (talk) 17:36, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Unclear explanation
"To use genkernel for generating an initramfs, it is recommended all necessary drivers and code that is needed to mount the / and /usr file systems be included in the kernel (not as modules)."

This is unclear since the point of initramfs may be to include things needed to mount / or /usr in the initramfs. They should be added to initramfs and not to the kernel. I may be wrong in some way but that's still because it's unclear what is meant here.

-- Dakota plaza (talk) 15:59, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

grub.conf
In the paragraph Initramfs/Guide is given an exemple of grub.conf file that allows to start with initramfs. If I'm right, this configuration file was used by Grub version 1, that isn't the commonly used nowadays. Grub2's config file's name is "grub.cnf", which is normally automatically generated by executing grub-mkconfig, with a completely different syntax and, as far as I know, editing this file "by hand" is heavily discouraged (moreover, any manual modification would be cancelled after rerunning grub-mkconfig). If that is true, I believe this text should be revised. Akar (talk) 17:12, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Well... Maybe it's not so clear actually, GNU GRUB Manual 2.04 says : "grub-mkconfig does have some limitations. While adding extra custom menu entries to the end of the list can be done by editing /etc/grub.d/40_custom or creating /boot/grub/custom.cfg, changing the order of menu entries or changing their titles may require making complex changes to shell scripts stored in /etc/grub.d/. This may be improved in the future. In the meantime, those who feel that it would be easier to write grub.cfg directly are encouraged to do so (see Booting, and Shell-like scripting), and to disable any system provided by their distribution to automatically run grub-mkconfig."

(the italics are mine)

--Akar (talk) 07:29, 6 June 2020 (UTC)