Linux boot drive issue

edward.ming.lee · 2014-04-19T14:55:06+00:00

I am trying to make a bootable USB disk to install on a laptop. In the old days, it was simple and can probably do it with less than 1G flash drive. I could build on sda1 and install on hda1 (PATA). But, in the name of progress, things are more difficult. It would take aro und 5G of flash. Booting 5M kernel and 30M ram disk takes several minutes. Building the kernel takes hours. But the biggest problem is SATA. With a poorly made decision, IMHO, they named the SATA "sd" as well. So, no w i have to make sdb1 and install on sda1, if i am lucky. With both SATA a nd USB MSD fighting for the first "sd" name, results are unpredictable. I get either sda1 UMSD and sdb1 SATA, or sdb1 UMSD and sda1 SATA. I am very tempted to, rip out the kernel and rename: 1. "hd" for SATA and "sd" for UMSD 2. "sd" for SATA and "ud" for UMSD 3. "hd" for SATA and "ud" for UMSD What do you guys think?b

Apr 19, 2014 23 Replies

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Grant Edwards 12 years ago

That attitude is downright un-American! Next you'll be claiming you don't have to get a new smartphone every 6 months.

Bah. That initramfs stuff is nonsense. If you build the kernel right in first place, you don't need an initial ramdisk or any of that fancy "module" stuff. ;)

I'm only half joking -- none of my Linux machines have initial ramdisks, and the only ones with modules loaded are the ones using the closed-source nvidia drivers.

But, I supose, if you want to build something that boots on any random PC, then yes, you will need an initial ramdisk and a _lot_ of modules that never get loaded for any particular machine.

Grant Edwards grant.b.edwards Yow! I'm having a at quadrophonic sensation gmail.com of two winos alone in a steel mill!

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edward.ming.lee 12 years ago

Pointless to argue about this. Perhaps someone else can verify it. Download the kernel, "make menuconfig", exit without changing anyway. "make" and come back a few hours later to check it.

There is no option to decide whether to place a module in initrd or rootfs. I want to build minimum initrd, but much more in rootfs.

Until i figure out where to spit the process, it is the same single "make install" to build modules for both initrd and rootfs.

If we have this new option, we don't have to do it manually.

Again, we need independent verifications. I'll tried it on two different notebooks (no CD/DVD): Fujisu T2010 and HP mini 311.

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David Brown 12 years ago

Well I'm not American, and I don't know what planet edward.ming.lee lives on, so I guess that's okay!

Initramfs is useful if you've got stuff like root on raid, crypto or lvm. But if you've just got a "normal" setup then you typically don't need it. And modules are handy to have around for hotplug devices - if you are compiling your own kernel, it makes sense to compile the stuff you normally need directly into the kernel rather than as a module. But having modules there is really handy when you want to plug in a new USB-to-Ethernet adaptor and find it just works out of the box.

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Tim Wescott 12 years ago

OH! This explains my high grocery bill and all the uneaten food I throw out every month!

Thanks!

Tim Wescott Wescott Design Services http://www.wescottdesign.com

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