Bug 849338

Description of problem:
dracut --include option does not add files from directory

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
dracut-018

How reproducible:
always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. create directory of addtional files to add to initramfs
2. attempt to build dracut initramfs using --include option
3. select --verbose dracut build output
  
Actual results:
dracut build output: "cp: accessing /var/tmp/initramfs[directory of files] : No such file or directory"

Expected results:
files should be added to the dracut initramfs

Additional info:

Thank you for having the --include option, Harald. But I can't seem to get it to work. Although many of the files are symlinks even the binary files are not being added. Using the --install option works fine. But I'm trying to add an entire directory, and it's making the dracut.conf file too large and unmanageable.

Here's some additional background, and a few other minor dracut issues I'm having:

I'm using this dracut config on a fedora-arm platform. We need additional functionality from the initramfs in the event the platform fails to boot, or if a rescue shell is needed. In addition, some of the kernel drivers are quite buggy, and must be force loaded by modprobe.

The additional directory is a /bin directory of busybox and its symlinks which need to be copied to the initramfs /bin. Currently, using the dracut -a "busybox" option causes the boot process to fail. So I created a /bin directory with busybox and the symlinks. Theses files do not overwrite any of the existing dracut binaries. So it works fine. But, as noted, the files have to be installed using the --install option.

In addition to the issue with --include, I also ran into an issue with  rd.driver.* (either option, respectively) not force loading the modules. I had to hack parse-kernel.sh to get that to work.

This platform, like many ARM platforms, also does not have a hard-coded MAC. Currently the only way to set the MAC is with an /etc/modprobe.d option. But that requires a dracut rebuild for each host. That is not really practical. So as a dracut feature request I would like to ask that the needed module options could be passed from the kernel cmdline with rd.driver.* or similar. Currently that fails to work using any dracut cmdline method.

As one last item to note: Many of these devices have no way to access u-boot. Therefore we need a way to access the dracut shell via the network if the device fails to boot. But, unfortunately, the rd.neednet=1 option does not bring up the network in the initramfs. Should the initramfs network be down?

Thanks again, Harald, for all your hard work!