Is a ramdisk being re-generated by default lately?

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Is a ramdisk being re-generated by default lately?

Postby phovos » Sat Mar 11, 2017 1:09 am

Hello,

I have been using linuxarm on an rpi for some months now and because I need some extra modules in order to have the filesystem on an lvm disk, I have been using a ramdisk (initrd).

Now every time I update the kernel I am re-generating one using "mkinitcpio" since my understanding has been so far that auto generation is not supported on arm branch.

However I noticed a little while ago that the system has created an "initramfs-linux.img" file on "/boot".

Does this mean that the system now automatically generates the ramdisk and i don't have to do it manually anymore?

Thanks,
phovos
 
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Re: Is a ramdisk being re-generated by default lately?

Postby graysky » Sat Mar 11, 2017 9:52 am

Yes, it generates by itself... did you not diff /boot/config.pacnew? Also when did you ever have to manually do it?
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Re: Is a ramdisk being re-generated by default lately?

Postby phovos » Sun Mar 12, 2017 12:30 am

The ramdisk was created by editing the "mkinitcpio.conf" and adding the relevant hooks (lvm2 etc).

Then $this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '# mkinitcpio -g /boot/initrd')
Subsequently added the following line

$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'initramfs initrd 0x01f00000')
to "/boot/config.txt",

and added the following

$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'root=/dev/mmcblk0p1 initrd=0x01f00000 rootfstype=ext4')
to "/boot/cmdline.txt".

Just to let you know know exactly what I had done so far.

Since then in every kernel update I had been regenerating it by

$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'mkinitcpio -c /etc/mkinitcpio.conf -g /boot/initrd -k KERNEL_VERSION')
and this is because I read somewhere, can't locate where exactly, that the system in arm won't do it by itself. Perhaps I misread something but I had done it diligently so far out of fear of failing to boot.

No I did not check the differences, could you elaborate?
phovos
 
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Re: Is a ramdisk being re-generated by default lately?

Postby phovos » Wed Mar 22, 2017 2:47 pm

To follow up,

I run diff between those two files and they were not the same. However when built the hooks appear to be identical and this makes sense as they use the same mkinitcpio config file.

Since it now appears to be compiling an image by itself, how can I make sure that the machine boots with the automatically generated one?

EDIT

OK to answer my own question this seems to be determined by config.txt on /boot .

The current one looks like this:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '# See /boot/overlays/README for all available options

gpu_mem=16
initramfs initrd 0x01f00000

#Overclocking
arm_freq=800
arm_freq_min=400
sdram_freq=500
sdram_freq_min=250
core_freq=300
core_freq_min=150
#over_voltage=1

#raspi-config 'Medium' settings
#arm_freq=900
#core_freq=250
#sdram_freq=450
#over_overvoltage=2
')

There is also another file config.txt.pacnew that was created by an update I don't recall right now, but it was about the time initramfs-linux.img appeared. Its contents are the following:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '# See /boot/overlays/README for all available options

gpu_mem=64
initramfs initramfs-linux.img followkernel
')

I do remember running across "followkernel" which starts loading modules after kernel has loaded whereas "0x01f00000" explicitly instructs at which point to start loading them and which might cause trouble if the size of the kernel gets bigger at some point.

Anyway I am guessing that merging these two files is the answer to my question.
phovos
 
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Re: Is a ramdisk being re-generated by default lately?

Postby phovos » Thu Mar 23, 2017 4:46 pm

Another question.

My "cmdline.txt" presently looks like this:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'root=/dev/rpistorage/root initrd=0x01f00000 rootfstype=ext4 rw rootwait console=ttyAMA0,115200 console=tty1 selinux=0 plymouth.enable=0 smsc95xx.turbo_mode=N dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 kgdboc=ttyAMA0,115200 elevator=noop
')

If I am to switch to "initramfs-linux.img" as stated above this has to be changed as well to that:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'root=/dev/rpistorage/root initramfs-linux.img=followkernel rootfstype=ext4 rw rootwait console=ttyAMA0,115200 console=tty1 selinux=0 plymouth.enable=0 smsc95xx.turbo_mode=N dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 kgdboc=ttyAMA0,115200 elevator=noop
')

Any objections to that?

In any case I kept a backup of these files and I am going to report when I do a reboot.
phovos
 
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Re: Is a ramdisk being re-generated by default lately?

Postby phovos » Mon Apr 03, 2017 7:35 pm

Just to report for those who land on this page at some point that the above are correct.

To those who might be wondering 'followkernel' option works fine.
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