[Mageia-dev] RFC: Drop mkinitrd completely in favour of dracut.

[Anssi Hannula]

On 03.12.2011 08:05, Thomas Backlund wrote:
> Anssi Hannula skrev 3.12.2011 01:06:
>> On 03.12.2011 00:18, Thomas Backlund wrote:
>>> Anssi Hannula skrev 2.12.2011 23:17:
>>>>
>>>> Patch attached. I guess this would remain as a Mageia specific patch as
>>>> the wanted behavior is dependant on how the distribution handles driver
>>>> switching etc...
>>>
>>> Speaking of driver switching...
>>>
>>> Is it possible to detect missing radeon firmware in initrd in early
>>> boot, and then switch to loading radeon with modeset=0 ?
>>
>> Seems doable (if a bit hacky), but unfortunately new radeon cards (at
>> least cayman/northern islands) do not work without KMS at all (while
>> slightly older cards like Evergreen mostly work but without any kind of
>> 2d/3d acceleration).
>>
> 
> Yeah, I started thinking about those too after my post...
> 
>> This also means that X server will fail to start since it doesn't
>> fallback to autodetection (and therefore vesa) when the card is
>> explicitely listed in xorg.conf.
>>
>> Not quite sure what is the best way forward.
>>
> 
> Hm, so we would need a split in detection for nonkms capable cards
> and the rest...
> 
> or take the easy way out and boot everyone on vesa until radeon firmware
> is available...

Does loading of radeon modesetting kernel driver without firmware break
the boot completely, or does it just make X.org server fail to start?

>> BTW, shouldn't we regenerate initrds when installing radeon-firmware for
>> the first time?
>>
> 
> Yeah, I've been thinking the same, but haven't gotten around to doing it
> yet.
> 
> and what about nvidia* and fglrx, should they do the same ?

Well, currently we always include the KMS drivers in initrd, and when
nvidia* or fglrx is enabled we simply add nokmsboot (mga/mdv specific)
kernel parameter to avoid initrd rebuild.

> and for a dkms related issue, I've also been thinking we whould
> trigger dkms rebuild on kernel install to save time on next bootup.

That would seem reasonable, it would just be a matter of
[ -x /usr/sbin/dkms_autoinstaller ] && \
	/usr/sbin/dkms_autoinstaller start %kernelver || :
in kernel %post AFAICS...

-- 
Anssi Hannula