[RFC] missing net drivers in 8.04+ initrd...

[Daniel J Blueman]

On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 6:08 PM, Oliver Grawert <ogra at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> hi,
> Am Montag, den 04.08.2008, 18:02 +0100 schrieb Matt Zimmerman:
>> > > This list is currently hardcoded in the initramfs-tools package
>> > > (/usr/share/initramfs-tools/hook-functions).  There is probably a case to be
>> > > made for this being maintained in the kernel packages instead, though, so
>> > > that it can be kept in sync with new drivers when they are added.
>> > >
>> > > Thus, probably something to raise with the kernel team.
>> >
>> > how about solving it dynamically by just pulling the listing of
>> > available modules with a clever find/ls command syntax from
>> > the /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/ dir instead of keeping it hardcoded ?
>>
>> Because I don't think we want *every* network driver, just a sensible
>> subset.
>>
>> I don't expect much netbooting over appletalk or HAM radio, for example.
>> It's OK to require some extra initramfs configuration for such weird cases,
>> but the default should be to include classes of device commonly used for
>> netbooting (like Ethernet).
> even then i think mantaining a blacklist to exclude modules from the set
> and keeping the rest dynamic will be less effort and less error
> prone ... we might end up with one or the other module we dont want in
> the initramfs that way if the blacklist is badly maintained but newly
> added pci drivers will at least automatically be available.

I agree that having this automated is mitigating risk - eg it's a pity
that this may become the only thing holding back LSTP/PXE right from
the install files. My desktop and laptop use atl1 and sky2 drivers
respectively, both which aren't in the Heron 8.04(.1) initrd, so I
can't PXE boot this on either :-( .

The list I introduced earlier in the thread was automatically
produced, using grep to check for PCI ethernet drivers - we can argue
that non-PCI and 10GbE drivers aren't needed (of which is a short
black-list).

Let me know if the grep command I used may help...

Thanks,
  Daniel

> ciao
>        oli
-- 
Daniel J Blueman