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
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.
Ok, thanks for the explanation.