Arch Linux

Bralkein

Member

Registered: 2004-10-26

Posts: 354

How do I pass location of init to kinit?

Okay, in times of old it was possible to pass the kernel an argument "init=/some/path/to/an/executable" in order to make it run something other than init. Nowadays, the kernel assumes the next thing in the chain is going to be kinit, so it passes it a special argument. Unfortunately, this argument will upset almost any other program.

Is there some way to give kinit the location of the next program to run (normally /sbin/init, I think) after early userspace? If not, is there some way to stop the kernel from passing the special argument?

Cheers.

brain0

Developer

From: Aachen - Germany

Registered: 2005-01-03

Posts: 1,382

Re: How do I pass location of init to kinit?

Uhm, that looks like stupid kinit bug. It simply passes all options to the new init (in this case to /bin/bash). bash doesn't like that and quits, which results in "attempting to kill init". I'll see what we can do about that.

Bralkein

Member

Registered: 2004-10-26

Posts: 354

Re: How do I pass location of init to kinit?

Right, cheers. I had a look in the kinit source code and you're correct. In fact, the code contains the traditional list order of programs to run as init - including /bin/sh as a last resort. However, it will always pass arguments to /bin/sh that will make it crash. So much for testing! So does the kernel not touch init=foo now, or does it just end up not evaluating it if you're using an image as part of the boot sequence? I am confused. Is there any documentation that explains all of this in detail?

As for the bug, I guess I won't bother reporting it if you're sorting it out.