Kernel 2.6.18 and mkinitcpio coming soon

brain0 · 2006-08-20 14:15:50

Can you poste the resulting file list for both images. Use mkinitcpio -s filelist and mkinitcpio -s filelist.fallback -c /path/to/fallback/config to generate them.

badger · 2006-08-20 14:36:32

Okey-dokey: for filelist

MODULES="" BINARIES="" FILES="" HOOKS="base udev autodetect ide sata usbinput encrypt filesystems"

For filelist.fallback

MODULES="" FILES="" HOOKS="base udev ide scsi sata usbinput encrypt filesystems raid"

I added the encrypt hook to the fallback /boot/mkinitcpio-kernel26.conf, rest is stock (BINARIES is commented out).

cheers

tpowa · 2006-08-20 14:52:57

could you try if adding ext3 to MODULES= solves your problem, your normal initrd doesn't contain a ext3 module, only reiserfs

badger · 2006-08-20 15:04:01

Yep, adding MODULES="ext3" explicitly does it. I don't know why resierfs is in the img, the one partition with it is not automounted, and it's rarely mounted. Cheers, time for bed at GMT+10.

brain0 · 2006-08-20 15:06:34

badger wrote:

Yep, adding MODULES="ext3" explicitly does it. I don't know why resierfs is in the img, the one partition with it is not automounted, and it's rarely mounted. Cheers, time for bed at GMT+10.

We pinned down the problem to the filesystem autodetection. Should be solved soon. Thanks again for testing the new encrypt hook.

tpowa · 2006-08-20 16:13:06

ok fixed in new cryptsetup and mkinitcpio package.
now time to hunt down the stdin:0 error

brain0 · 2006-08-20 17:13:25

@badger: Ok, the autodetect hook should be fixed, try again with mkinitcpio 0.5.4 from testing and with MODULES="".

badger · 2006-08-20 23:21:20

Back again...it all seems to work well with mkinitcpio 0.5.4-1 and cryptsetup 1.0.3-5 (no explicit inclusion of the ext3 module). Thanks for your quick assistance; now I'd really like to setup my laptop with Arch and resuming from encrypted swap.

cheers

brain0 · 2006-08-20 23:53:35

badger wrote:

Back again...it all seems to work well with mkinitcpio 0.5.4-1 and cryptsetup 1.0.3-5 (no explicit inclusion of the ext3 module). Thanks for your quick assistance;

Thanks for YOUR help, we were looking for someone to test legacy cryptsetup. Glad it now all works.

now I'd really like to setup my laptop with Arch and resuming from encrypted swap.

I'm afraid, that won't be too easy. If you resume from encrypted swap, you would have to enter one passphrase to check if your swap contains a suspend image, and another to decrypt your root partition if resuming fails. Another possibility would be a separate key partition that stores the keys for both your swap and root partition. Both methods are not implemented in mkinitcpio. Although easy to implement, both methods are quite ugly.

Here is what I do: I use suspend2 with the filewriter and store the suspend image on my root partition. This way I only have to enter one passphrase to access both the suspend image and the root partition. Another advantage would be that (if set up properly) this method works out of the box with mkinitcpio.

badger · 2006-08-21 02:09:52

A really good suggestion about using the suspend2 filewriter Brain! I wasn't suggesting everyone run around and sort out encrypted swap with hibernation (esp. in this thread), but now I am doubly pleased - a legacy cryptsetup system seems to work with Arch's initramfs stuff, and I have a much better idea on fixing up my laptop.

Cheers all.

Pudge · 2006-08-21 15:33:32

First, let me say that the biggest reason I'm such an Arch fan is because IT JUST WORKS. I'm not constantly fiddling around with it. It's like a car. I don't want to have to know what every part and every nut and bolt on a car does in order to drive it. I just want to start the car, put it in drive and go.

Having said that, I've been putting off converting to initcpio. However, I know it's coming, I had some spare time today, and I figured initcpio had been in testing long enough to get out most of the bugs, so I took the plunge.

I simply edited /boot/grub/menu.lst to utilize initcpio using the default kernel26.img that was created the last time the kernel was updated. Once again, IT JUST WORKED, no problems. Plus it booted faster.

Out of curiosity, I did a lsmod. Whoa, the listing was much shorter, so I did an experiment. I booted the computer to the Gnome desktop using initrd, did a lsmod to see what services were running. Exited the terminal window, and used the Gnome system monitor to see how much RAM was being used. Then I booted the computer to the Gnome desktop using initcpio and did the same.

My computer, which is an AMD Athlon 64 (San Diego core)
initrd
96 services running and 99.6 MB user RAM
initcpio
58 services running and 90.4 MB user Ram

My wife's computer, which is and AMD Athlon XP
initrd
146 services running 82.2 MB user RAM
initcpio
65 services running 76.5 MB user RAM

I knew the devs were switching to initcpio for a reason, and I expected initcpio to be more effecient at starting only the services you need for your hardware, etc. but I was surprised by how much better it was.

I don't know why it helped my wife's computer more, but both results were quite impressive in my opinion.

Way to go phrakture, tpowa, and everyone else who helped on initcpio.

Now for my question. In the hooks section, mkinitcpio.conf has scsi listed. I don't have any scsi devices, but I know CD/DVD burners use (or at least they used to use) scsi emulation. Do I need to have scsi for my CD/DVD burners or can I eliminate scsi? Or, would it be best to stick with the default setup?

Pudge

brain0 · 2006-08-21 18:19:36

What you are experiencing is the cause of a very cautious mkinitrd default setting: It had autodetection disabled by default. So mkinitrd loaded every single filesystem, ide, scsi and sata module that existed. This could be fixed by enabling autodetection in mkinitrd.conf.
mkinitcpio will (even with build-time autodetection disabled), autodetect the right controller on runtime and only load that one. That makes it faster and your system smaller.

Pudge wrote:

Now for my question. In the hooks section, mkinitcpio.conf has scsi listed. I don't have any scsi devices, but I know CD/DVD burners use (or at least they used to use) scsi emulation. Do I need to have scsi for my CD/DVD burners or can I eliminate scsi? Or, would it be best to stick with the default setup?

1) scsi emulation is deprecated and not used any more for CD/DVD writers. Either way, the early userspace only needs the modules necessary to mount your root partition, which is its only purpose. Everything else is loaded later when the system is booted.
2) You can disable scsi, but it won't make a difference. mkinitcpio autodetects that there are no scsi controllers in your computer and won't include any.

Pudge · 2006-08-22 03:11:04

Thanks brain0 for the information. Your item #2 has convinced me to just leave the default configuration as is.

Like I said, I don't like spending time tweaking my OS, I'd rather spend what little computer time I have using my existing apps and learning new apps as I feel the need. With Arch, I feel as if the devs do a LOT of the tweaking for me giving me an optimized, tweaked, lean and mean, yet stable OS right out of the box leaving me free to actually use my computer for productivity. mkinitcpio is further proof of that. My hat is off to everyone involved with putting out Arch Linux.

Pudge

fk · 2006-08-23 19:51:48

Hm, I have a ext2 boot partition, but when i write ext2 in the Moduls list in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf, and will generate , ext2 is not found, and when I try modprobe, ext2 is not found....

Can it be, that the ext3 module include ext2?

tpowa · 2006-08-23 19:55:20

atm ext2 is included in kernel itself, this will change with 2.6.18

nightfrost · 2006-08-23 20:19:53

Hmm... reading this thread made me realize that
this problem probably is due to mkinitcpio. I haven't really been able to use stock kernels because of this problem, and since I had no replies to my post I never realized it was related to mkinitcpio (which I now presume it is).

tpowa · 2006-08-23 20:27:40

now fixed with new initcpio in testing the '.' problem is fixed

brain0 · 2006-08-23 22:12:05

fk wrote:

Hm, I have a ext2 boot partition, but when i write ext2 in the Moduls list in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf, and will generate , ext2 is not found, and when I try modprobe, ext2 is not found....

You don't need the module for the boot partition anyway. Only the one for the root partition is required. Once ext2 becomes a module (which will happen with 2.6.18), it will be automatically included in the image, so no need to add it (unless of course you specify all the modules yourself, meaning HOOKS="base").

Lone_Wolf · 2006-08-26 14:21:49

sweiss wrote:

Hmm, this thread made me wonder, is mkinitcpio Arch-specific?

Good question. I've done a bit of searching and all entries i can find about mkinitcpio are related to archlinux.

McQueen · 2006-08-26 16:00:09

mkinitcpio®

phrakture · 2006-08-27 07:51:38

Lone_Wolf wrote:

sweiss wrote:
Hmm, this thread made me wonder, is mkinitcpio Arch-specific?
Good question. I've done a bit of searching and all entries i can find about mkinitcpio are related to archlinux.

Yeah, I wrote the core from scratch. Hook scripts and testing and all the fine tuning was done by tpowa, myself, and some important raid/encryption work from brain0.

nightfrost · 2006-08-27 08:39:38

I'm really sorry to be on your cases constantly for this, but it's causing me major problems (i.e. I can't test stock kernels and mkinictpio).

Is it in anyway possible to pass something like i8042.nomux to the kernel at boot time?

Loading Initramfs
export: 25: i8042.nomux: bad variable name
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

I've been looking through the forums and the wiki, but haven't found anything useful. I might have missed something on the way...

brain0 · 2006-08-27 11:28:15

nightfrost wrote:

Is it in anyway possible to pass something like i8042.nomux to the kernel at boot time?
Loading Initramfs
export: 25: i8042.nomux: bad variable name
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init! 

Which version do you use? The error message should be gone with mkinitcpio 0.5.4 and klibc-extras 2.1, maybe earlier (of course the image has to be generated with that version). And IMO the error shouldn't be fatal, meaning it shouldn't panic only because of it. Can you please give some more information?

paulicat · 2006-08-28 13:38:01

Hi all,

I get this error message also when booting with mkinitcpio...
I pass psmouse.proto=imps to the kernel because of this crazy synaptics touchpad.
I just found this post above mine today, I haven't tried booting with that parameter removed from grub but I will try it tonight and update here...

phrakture · 2006-08-28 15:20:42

The error is with a dot in the parameter name, for both nightfrost and paulicat. This should be fixed in testing, so _please_ upgrade to testing and try it out.

Arch Linux

#51 2006-08-20 14:15:50

Re: Kernel 2.6.18 and mkinitcpio coming soon

#52 2006-08-20 14:36:32

Re: Kernel 2.6.18 and mkinitcpio coming soon

#53 2006-08-20 14:52:57

Re: Kernel 2.6.18 and mkinitcpio coming soon

#54 2006-08-20 15:04:01

Re: Kernel 2.6.18 and mkinitcpio coming soon

#55 2006-08-20 15:06:34

Re: Kernel 2.6.18 and mkinitcpio coming soon

#56 2006-08-20 16:13:06

Re: Kernel 2.6.18 and mkinitcpio coming soon

#57 2006-08-20 17:13:25

Re: Kernel 2.6.18 and mkinitcpio coming soon

#58 2006-08-20 23:21:20

Re: Kernel 2.6.18 and mkinitcpio coming soon

#59 2006-08-20 23:53:35

Re: Kernel 2.6.18 and mkinitcpio coming soon

#60 2006-08-21 02:09:52

Re: Kernel 2.6.18 and mkinitcpio coming soon

#61 2006-08-21 15:33:32

Re: Kernel 2.6.18 and mkinitcpio coming soon

#62 2006-08-21 18:19:36

Re: Kernel 2.6.18 and mkinitcpio coming soon

#63 2006-08-22 03:11:04

Re: Kernel 2.6.18 and mkinitcpio coming soon

#64 2006-08-23 19:51:48

Re: Kernel 2.6.18 and mkinitcpio coming soon

#65 2006-08-23 19:55:20

Re: Kernel 2.6.18 and mkinitcpio coming soon

#66 2006-08-23 20:19:53

Re: Kernel 2.6.18 and mkinitcpio coming soon

#67 2006-08-23 20:27:40

Re: Kernel 2.6.18 and mkinitcpio coming soon

#68 2006-08-23 22:12:05

Re: Kernel 2.6.18 and mkinitcpio coming soon

#69 2006-08-26 14:21:49

Re: Kernel 2.6.18 and mkinitcpio coming soon

#70 2006-08-26 16:00:09

Re: Kernel 2.6.18 and mkinitcpio coming soon

#71 2006-08-27 07:51:38

Re: Kernel 2.6.18 and mkinitcpio coming soon

#72 2006-08-27 08:39:38

Re: Kernel 2.6.18 and mkinitcpio coming soon

#73 2006-08-27 11:28:15

Re: Kernel 2.6.18 and mkinitcpio coming soon

#74 2006-08-28 13:38:01

Re: Kernel 2.6.18 and mkinitcpio coming soon

#75 2006-08-28 15:20:42

Re: Kernel 2.6.18 and mkinitcpio coming soon

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