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  • Re: Re: It makes no sense to link vmlinuz and initramfs to the root dir

    From Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues@21:1/5 to All on Tue Nov 12 11:10:01 2024
    Quoting Hans (2024-11-12 09:35:08)
    However, maybe a link is alo no more needed, even with a seperated /boot partition.

    It's just a symlink. What's the harm?

    Having the symlink is very practical for bootloaders that are not grub. Pointing an extlinux.conf or a boot.scr to /vmlinuz instead of having to infer the version is nice.

    The tool debvm-run also relies on that symlink to infer the kernel image location.

    And so does the tool mmdebstrap-autopkgtest-build-qemu.

    This is why this is a good example of Chesterton's Fence as Geert already pointed out. Before trying to tear it down, maybe you missed some of its uses.

    Thanks!

    cheers, josch
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  • From Guillem Jover@21:1/5 to Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues on Tue Nov 12 12:40:01 2024
    Hi!

    On Tue, 2024-11-12 at 11:02:53 +0100, Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues wrote:
    Quoting Hans (2024-11-12 09:35:08)
    However, maybe a link is alo no more needed, even with a seperated /boot partition.

    It's just a symlink. What's the harm?

    For me, the default location of the symlinks (which was the initial complaint) pollutes the root directory with files that to me do not belong there.

    Having the symlink is very practical for bootloaders that are not grub. Pointing an extlinux.conf or a boot.scr to /vmlinuz instead of having to infer
    the version is nice.

    While related, I don't think this was the complaint at hand. I've got
    no systems I personally manage with symlinks on /, but for the systems
    where those symlinks are present (most of them, one with etckeeper
    history going back to 2009, when I installed etckeeper there), those get
    placed under /boot, which gives the advantages you point out.

    This would be the distinction between:

    do_symlinks = yes

    and

    image_dest = /boot

    or

    link_in_boot = yes

    The tool debvm-run also relies on that symlink to infer the kernel image location.

    And so does the tool mmdebstrap-autopkgtest-build-qemu.

    This is why this is a good example of Chesterton's Fence as Geert already pointed out. Before trying to tear it down, maybe you missed some of its uses.

    I've had in mind starting this discussion some time ago, when I found
    again a system with this default (thanks for starting it now!), but
    postponed it because it would require checking whether there is any
    current code that might break (although that would seem surprising
    given the kernel-img.conf options available).

    I think the first step, before considering a default change would probably
    be a visit over codesearch.debian.net, and then see what needs fixing or adapting to support both locations, then file some bugs (ideally with
    patches), and once those are handled then file a bug against whatever
    generates the default kernel-img.conf, and against what holds the default
    value to change it?

    Thanks,
    Guillem

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