Arch Linux Updates Its Kernel Installation Handling

[schmidtbag]

Meanwhile, I'm just learning now there was a linux-zen package...

[pete910]

What kind of advantage does dracut provide? Some Arch users don't even use initramfs.

Not sure to be honest. I think it's a smaller initramfs/ shorter boot times

[xnor]

Meanwhile, I'm just learning now there was a linux-zen package...

So you've never read the installation guide?

[schmidtbag]

So you've never read the installation guide?

Not in at least 4 years (so, before Zen was released). I don't really need it at this point.

[R41N3R]

So you've never read the installation guide?

I've looked at it as well only many years ago, since then I've used my own notes and scripts ;-)

[Hi-Angel]

What kind of advantage does dracut provide? Some Arch users don't even use initramfs.

More share with other projects, less maintainance for everyone. Dracut is at the very least used on Fedora. And as other mentioned, Mandriva/Mageia use it too.

[tildearrow]

Why is that a mistake?

...I thought it was?

Mostly due to lacking Unix perms in FAT, which causes every file to be marked as executable.

[gmturner]

What kind of advantage does dracut provide? Some Arch users don't even use initramfs.

Dracut is an early-init framework that does certain "initrd-like" things, like for example, find your initramfs, unwrap however many layers of compression and encryption it might be wrapped in, mount it, and pivot to it, with some special sauce for usb keys and stuff. It's main user-facing features are to manage the framebuffer console transitions in a mostly-jank-free manner, and to make certain rare types of boot problems almost impossible to diagnose interactively without a lot of obscure knowledge (i.e.: just spinimathings forever until you press escape; then dumped into a gimped bb emergency shell to try to parse a huge log file in tmpfs that is prone to unceremoniously disappearing).

It's very very flexible at assembly/build-time, and could be repurposed to do almost anything -- it mostly consists of a bunch of simple scripts that execute in a proscribed "rc.d" type of scheme with various hooks for things like "before showing spinimathing", "after mounted second initramfs layer," etc.

[pkunk]

...I thought it was?

Mostly due to lacking Unix perms in FAT, which causes every file to be marked as executable.

You probably want to specify at least fmask/dmask when mounting FAT.

[flecht]

Not in at least 4 years (so, before Zen was released). I don't really need it at this point.

I guess linux-zen is not what you think it is.

Take a look here:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Kernel#Officially_supported_kernels