Bug 139114

Summary: mkinitrd 4.x man page is missing instructions for loopback root
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Barry K. Nathan <barryn>
Component: mkinitrdAssignee: Jeremy Katz <katzj>
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX QA Contact: David Lawrence <dkl>
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 3CC: barryn
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Hardware: i686   
OS: Linux   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Last Closed: 2004-11-15 14:44:39 UTC Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Barry K. Nathan 2004-11-12 23:17:57 UTC
Description of problem:
The mkinitrd 3.x man page had the following paragraphs:
---begin quote---
       If  the  root device is on a loop device (such as /dev/loop0),
mkinitrd
       will build an initrd which sets up the loopback file properly.
  To  do
       this, the fstab must contain a comment of the form:

           # LOOP0: /dev/hda1 vfat /linux/rootfs

       LOOP0 must be the name of the loop device which needs to be
configured,
       in all capital lettes. The parameters after the colon  are  the
 device
       which  contains  the  filesystem  with  the  loopback  image on
it, the
       filesystem which is on the device, and the full path  to  the 
loopback
       image.  If the filesystem is modular, initrd will automatically
add the
       filesystemâs modules to the initrd image.
---end quote---

However, this is no longer mentioned in the mkinitrd 4.x man page. Was
this intentionally removed from the man page or is it just an
oversight? If the latter, then I believe the instructions should be
added back to the man page.

(The functionality still works; in fact, I'm filing this bug via a
router running Fedora Core 3 off a loopback file on a VFAT partition.)

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
mkinitrd-4.1.18-2

How reproducible:
Always

Comment 1 Jeremy Katz 2004-11-15 14:44:39 UTC
Loopback root stuff isn't officially supported any more.  It might
still work but I don't ever test it and reserve the right to pull the
functionality at any time.

Documenting it is counter to that.

Comment 2 Barry K. Nathan 2004-11-15 21:23:23 UTC
Ok, thanks for the explanation.