mainline kernel initrd symlink bug

[Andy Whitcroft]

On Tue, Nov 05, 2013 at 06:35:18AM +0800, Daniel J Blueman wrote:
> There's an issue with the mainline kernels using an absolute path in
> the /initrd.img symlink they create, breaking certain setups, eg PXE
> booting:
> 
> # ls -l /
> initrd.img -> /boot/initrd.img-3.12.0-031200-generic
> initrd.img.old -> boot/initrd.img-3.11.0-12-generic
> vmlinuz -> boot/vmlinuz-3.12.0-031200-generic
> vmlinuz.old -> boot/vmlinuz-3.11.0-12-generic
> 
> When the TFTP server derefs the initrd.img symlink from the directory
> the rootfs it is in, it fails to find the initrd.
> 
> How can I address this issue?

I am somewhat supprised that those links are actually built in a different
way.  It is not as if those files are even part of the package afterall.
They are made during install by the postinst.  I assume they are installed
in a different way as a result of your manually doing the install, that
might affect it.  You could experiment with hand installing an official
package the exact same way you do those and see if it also suffers.
That might make it an apt-get against dpkg difference.

You could of course just fix them afterwards, we are not really expecting
those to be used for anything other than testing anyway.

-apw