[Mageia-dev] RFC: Drop mkinitrd completely in favour of dracut.

[Anssi Hannula]

On 03.12.2011 16:39, Anssi Hannula wrote:
> On 03.12.2011 08:05, Thomas Backlund wrote:
>> Anssi Hannula skrev 3.12.2011 01:06:
>>> On 03.12.2011 00:18, Thomas Backlund wrote:
>>>> Anssi Hannula skrev 2.12.2011 23:17:
>>>>>
>>>>> Patch attached. I guess this would remain as a Mageia specific patch as
>>>>> the wanted behavior is dependant on how the distribution handles driver
>>>>> switching etc...
>>>>
>>>> Speaking of driver switching...
>>>>
>>>> Is it possible to detect missing radeon firmware in initrd in early
>>>> boot, and then switch to loading radeon with modeset=0 ?
>>>
>>> Seems doable (if a bit hacky), but unfortunately new radeon cards (at
>>> least cayman/northern islands) do not work without KMS at all (while
>>> slightly older cards like Evergreen mostly work but without any kind of
>>> 2d/3d acceleration).
>>>
>>
>> Yeah, I started thinking about those too after my post...
>>
>>> This also means that X server will fail to start since it doesn't
>>> fallback to autodetection (and therefore vesa) when the card is
>>> explicitely listed in xorg.conf.
>>>
>>> Not quite sure what is the best way forward.
>>>
>>
>> Hm, so we would need a split in detection for nonkms capable cards
>> and the rest...
>>
>> or take the easy way out and boot everyone on vesa until radeon firmware
>> is available...
> 
> Does loading of radeon modesetting kernel driver without firmware break
> the boot completely, or does it just make X.org server fail to start?

Does anyone know?

>>> BTW, shouldn't we regenerate initrds when installing radeon-firmware for
>>> the first time?
>>>
>>
>> Yeah, I've been thinking the same, but haven't gotten around to doing it
>> yet.

One possibility is to make dracut record the missing firmware files
somewhere, and then in %post or in filetrigger (for /lib/firmware) check
if missing firmware got installed, and in that case run
bootloader-config --action rebuild-initrds.

>> and what about nvidia* and fglrx, should they do the same ?
> 
> Well, currently we always include the KMS drivers in initrd, and when
> nvidia* or fglrx is enabled we simply add nokmsboot (mga/mdv specific)
> kernel parameter to avoid initrd rebuild.
> 
>> and for a dkms related issue, I've also been thinking we whould
>> trigger dkms rebuild on kernel install to save time on next bootup.
> 
> That would seem reasonable, it would just be a matter of
> [ -x /usr/sbin/dkms_autoinstaller ] && \
> 	/usr/sbin/dkms_autoinstaller start %kernelver || :
> in kernel %post AFAICS...
> 


-- 
Anssi Hannula