Bug 103665

They should be prepended to the command line so that command line options can
override them.  I'm not against such a patch, but I'm not likely to get to it
anytime soon since it doesn't really help with configurations that we actually
support.

Created attachment 95278 [details]
Collection of patches for mkinitrd, one of which introduces /etc/sysconfig/mkinitrd

This attachment contains not only a patch file that introduces
/etc/sysconfig/mkinitrd as a means to add default settings to the mkinitrd
program, but also --no-config-file and --config-file=pathname (so far
undocumented) options to reset the list.  This is patch
mkinitrd.05-sysconfig-mkinitrd

The other patches are broken-up versions of the patches i nbug 106926.

If the patch I just posted to bug 103821 is accepted, patch
mkinitrd.04-aftermods-sbp2.patch is no longer needed, and
03-aftermods-support.patch could go with it.  I don't particularly care about
02-insmod-k-usb-sleep, but 01-sbp2-rescan is absolutely necessary to be able to
have a root filesystem (and/or volume groups or raid devices containing it)
spanning across firewire hard disks, and 05-sysconfig-mkintird makes it far
simpler to ugprade the kernel without the risk that the new initrd will be
missing essential options.

It turns out that, if you load sbp2 after ohci1394, the odds that it will fail
to log into the my external hard disk increase dramatically.  This means I take
back on the claim that paches 03 and 04 can be dropped.  They should still go
in.  I've also come up with some improvements to the scsi bus scanning, by
rewriting the relevant portions of rescan-scsi-bus.sh in C, such that the
program can be added to the initrd filesystem, or to the installer image.

Created attachment 95373 [details]
program that does the boot-time-equivalent of rescan-scsi-bus.sh

Created attachment 95374 [details]
patch that improves on mkinitrd.01-sbp2-rescan.patch, using rescan-scsi-bus binary

This patch, to be installed after the 5 patches in mkinitd-patches.tar.bz2 (or
along with mkinitrd.01-sbp2-rescan.patch) makes the boot speedier, by removing
the no-longer-needed sleep, and more flexible, by using a program that will be
more flexible in that it will dynamically detect which scsi hosts to scan,
instead of only rescanning those that were present at mkinitrd time.

Created attachment 95375 [details]
program that does the boot-time-equivalent of rescan-scsi-bus.sh

Oops, I'd posted an out-of-date version of the program, that was missing error
checking after fopen :-(

All of the sbp2-related gunk can fortunately go away in FC2, but the
patch mkinitrd.05-sysconfig-mkinitrd.patch, that enables seamless
kernel upgrades (because you can create an /etc/sysconfig/mkinitrd
that states what you need in initrd for it to boot), would still be
very nice ot have.  Any chance of integrating it, or at least
commenting on the patch such that I can put it in an acceptable form?
 Thanks,

Some change in mkinitrd/modprobe/something alike in FC2test2
introduced a very interesting and welcome behavior for me.  Entries
that look like `alias scsi_hostadapter sbp2' or `alias
scsi_hostadapter usb-storage' cause the aliased modules to be included
in initrd, which is exactly what I needed.

Someone might still like to change mkinitrd such that it could accept
a default set of options, but the patch I wrote has probably been
found too ugly to be included, and since my problem is solved, I won't
rewrite it unless given some indication that there's interest in
adding the feature.  I'm now happy without it.

Yeah, not sure I'm comfortable with some of the implications of a
mkinitrd.conf at this point.