Subject: Re: [vserver] ramFS Host
From: Ed W <lists@wildgooses.com>
Date: Sun, 06 Jan 2008 00:36:38 +0000


> I do something very similar in my alpine linux distro. Instead of just
> continuing in initramfs, the init script mounts a tmpfs, finds a base
> installation (2-3MB) and "switch_root" to the tmpfs. From here it loads
> a set of packages (from usb/cdrom/cf) and configuration (from
> usb/floppy/cf).
>
> >From this base installation it is possible to mount disks, raid, iscsi,
> lvm and fire up vserver guests.
>   


Hi Natanael

I have followed your posts in gentoo-embedded mailing list.  I have only 
examined alpine-linux a little, but I'm not quite sure why you use the 
tmpfs rather than say keeping with the initramfs and perhaps using aufs 
to overwrite with additional packages, and perhaps even adding a 
writeable /etc directory?  (Actually on the wrt linksys distros they 
often add a writable partition with symlinks into /etc, or vice-versa)

Having only an initramfs seems like a very sensible solution for 
Michael?  He could use a second partition for writable stuff and mount 
it rw - then simply symlink in anything required from the static 
partition to give a kind of updatable /etc/ (or whatever)

I'm researching something similar myself, but in my case I want quite a 
lot of stuff in the base distro (30-60MB perhaps) and so your tmpfs 
approach seems like quite a waste when I only have 128 or 256MB or ram 
on the devices I want to use...?

Anyone else got any other thoughts on this?

Cheers

Ed W