RE: [Xen-ia64-devel] RHEL4 without initrd - too hard!

["Magenheimer, Dan (HP Labs Fort Collins)" <dan.magenheimer@xxxxxx>]

There are probably multiple ways to solve this problem.
Since Anthony made the changes to elilo (and I do think
these are in both xen-ia64-unstable.hg and xen-unstable.hg)
we should be able to boot RHEL4 with an initrd.
Building one that is compatible with both a default
installation of RHEL4 (which uses LVM?) and a stock kernel.org
kernel (and thus also with xenlinux) is the hard problem
that I don't think anybody yet has solved (or at least
not described for me or for this list).

It would be a fine contribution to xen-ia64 if someone
who has the know-how to build/boot RHEL4 with a 2.6.12+
kernel.org kernel could apply that know-how to build/boot
Xen/ia64 and Xenlinux/ia64 with RHEL4 and DOCUMENT the steps
so that we could all move forward
from the RHEL3.x systems we are using for test/development.

Dan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: xen-ia64-devel-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
> [mailto:xen-ia64-devel-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf 
> Of Luck, Tony
> Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2005 11:04 AM
> To: xen-ia64-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [Xen-ia64-devel] RHEL4 without initrd - too hard!
> 
> From: "Tian, Kevin" <kevin.tian@xxxxxxxxx>
> > IIRC, RHEL4 should be able to boot 2.6 kernel without 
> initrd requirement.
> 
> Up until RHEL4 I had always built kernels with all the drivers
> builtin to avoid the need to copy around initrd and module files
> (so I could easily build a kernel on one machine, copy it to
> another, and boot it there).
> 
> With RHEL4 I finally gave in and started using initrd.  The issue
> that tipped me over into this was "udev" ... my non-initrd kernel
> just complained that it couldn't open an initial console (because
> udev hadn't been started, and so /dev was empty ... i.e. no 
> /dev/console).
> 
> It might be possible to work around this by using mknod to make
> all the nodes that you need in /dev (booting a rescue CD to do this).
> But I figured that it was too much effort to continue to swim
> against the tide.
> 
> So now my build scripts also run "mkinitrd" and then make a tarball
> of the kernel, initrd, and all the files I need from lib/modules.
> So I can still just copy one file to another machine ... I just need
> to unpack it when I get there.
> 
> -Tony
> 
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