Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 506934
RFE: user usb modules support
Last modified: 2009-06-19 11:35:48 EDT
Description of problem: I tried to install a system on USB stick and make it bootable, however it failed. I've figured out that the problem I am facing ATM is that the initrd does not include support for usb storage and thus the root does not get mounted. From mkinitrd man page: mkinitrd creates an initial image used by the kernel for preloading the block device modules (such as IDE, SCSI or RAID) which are needed to access the root filesystem. mkinitrd automatically loads filesystem modules (such as ext3 and jbd), IDE modules, all scsi_hostadapter entries in /etc/modprobe.conf, and raid modules if the system’s root partition is on raid, which makes it simple to build and use kernels using modular device drivers. - this list does not include anything like "usb storage modules" (usb != ide, usb != scsi ...), and trying to add e.g. "usb-storage" into /etc/modprobe.conf is in vain, mkinitrd does not include this module within the initrd it creates. This can be workarounded when manually invoking mkinitrd using the "--with" option, but it is missed on automatic initrd builds like during kernel package installation. So please add support also for including USB storage drivers modules. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): mkinitrd-6.0.86-2.fc11 How reproducible: always Steps to Reproduce: 1. install Fedora on non-usb disk (i.e. qemu image etc.) 2. check the contents of /boot/initrd... 3. try to add usb-storage into /etc/modprobe.d/... 4. reinstall the kernel (rpm --replacepkgs ...) 5. check the contents of /boot/initrd... Actual results: the initrd image DOES NOT contain usb-storage module Expected results: the initrd image DOES contain usb-storage module Additional info: This RFE is related to bug #204742 and also bug #478824, but the point is a bit different here. Also note that the man page is obsolete as modprobe.conf is now replaced with modprobe.d/*
With current mkinitrd, it is very much tailored to the system you are building the initrd on. You can use /etc/sysconfig/modules to set up some defaults that get listened to. We're not going to change that in the current code. In Fedora 12, we will hopefully be moving to dracut at which point this will be changed and what you're hoping for will actually be the default mode of operation.