Do you prefer dracut or genkernel?

crocket · Guru Joined: 29 Apr 2017 Posts: 391

Both work, but genkernel's initial ramdisk seems to produce prettier boot messages.

What do you prefer?

Koyan · n00b Joined: 07 Nov 2014 Posts: 6

Bliss-initramfs. Works the best for me with root on zfs.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Mar 02, 2019 9:40 am Post subject:

crocket,

I like to know what's in my system, so when it breaks, I can put the pieces together again.

I dislike all the autoblackmagic equally.
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Computer users fall into two groups:-
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those that have never had a hard drive fail.

crocket · Guru Joined: 29 Apr 2017 Posts: 391

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Mar 02, 2019 1:39 pm Post subject:

crocket,

The method described here.
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NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

crocket · Guru Joined: 29 Apr 2017 Posts: 391

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Mar 02, 2019 2:25 pm Post subject:

crocket,

Whenever you use the 'black box' solution to solve a problem, someone, sometime, had to understard the problem well enough to create the 'black box' for you to use.

I'm not saying that 'black box' solutions are inherently bad, just that they don't always work and when that happens you have no understanding of what went wrong.
By all means use black boxs to delay the learning opportunity but don't put it off forever. One day, you will wish you hadn't, then its too late.
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Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

nlsa8z6zoz7lyih3ap · Guru Joined: 25 Sep 2007 Posts: 378 Location: Canada

I write my own, basically using the method refereed to by Neddy
I find it much easier than trying to understand either Dracut or genkernel.

Koyan · n00b Joined: 07 Nov 2014 Posts: 6

Muso · Posted: Sat Mar 02, 2019 6:20 pm Post subject:

Naib · Posted: Sat Mar 02, 2019 7:25 pm Post subject:

no initramFS so neither. my use cases do not need one so I don't.
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Syl20 · Guru Joined: 04 Aug 2005 Posts: 568 Location: France

On my laptop, using LVM+LUKS, I wrote my own initramfs generator script, using this and this. That took some time to make it work, but I learnt lots of things on how that works. So those spent hours were absolutely not a waste of time.
On all the other boxes I own, I don't use an initramfs. I don't need it, even with a separate /usr filesystem/partition.

msst · Apprentice Joined: 07 Jun 2011 Posts: 236

I use genkernels initramfs on a small server. Tried dracut, more complicated on the server, not working correctly on the desktop.
On that desktop I use better-initramfs. Both systems use full-disk encryption dmcrypt-luks and btrfs. This configuration is not easy generally and requires an initramfs.

crocket · Guru Joined: 29 Apr 2017 Posts: 391

Zucca · Posted: Thu Mar 07, 2019 11:18 am Post subject:

Currently I use initramfs on my desktop and server. On both setups /boot (and /boot/efi) are located on an USB memory stick. All the disks on my systems have no partition tables, but are all formatted/filled with btrfs.
Since I use multi-device btrfs it's pretty complicated to boot without iniramfs. Well.. Tehnically I could boot kernel with rootfsflags=device=/dev/sda,device=/dev/sdb,device=/dev/sdc,device=/dev/sdd,device=/dev/sde, but it's not recommended.
I have had ideas of creating my own initramfs, but hadn't really put too much thought to it... yet. So my current solution is to use genkernel.
One another way would be to supply custom linuxrc for genkernel. That would possibly be a pretty good "middle ground".
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msst · Apprentice Joined: 07 Jun 2011 Posts: 236

bammbamm808 · Guru Joined: 08 Dec 2002 Posts: 495 Location: Hawaii

Manual after emerging new sources. It's really not so bad once you get used to it. and Gives you much more control over and insight into the workings of your system. Have never emerged Genkerel. I know vaguely what it is, but have no use of it.
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Maitreya · Guru Joined: 11 Jan 2006 Posts: 430

Only use genkernel-next for the machine that has root in raid btrfs.
Does anyone know other initramfs builders that support root raid btrfs/plymouth?

bunder · Bodhisattva Joined: 10 Apr 2004 Posts: 5907

i didn't use an initrd for many years until i switched to zfs... afaik, even if you build the modules into the kernel, you still need an initrd to import your pool and mount datasets. that said, i'm currently using dracut because genkernel had bugs at the time. it was suggested to me that genkernel would switch to dracut for initrd generation, but last time i checked, that hadn't happened.
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SpiderPigLoki · n00b Joined: 22 Aug 2008 Posts: 62

Little late to the party, but for me it's dracut.
Genkernel (and Genkernel-Next) have the nasty bug of not being able to properly work with LUKS and s2disk.

EDIT: Fixed typo

fturco · l33t Joined: 08 Dec 2010 Posts: 817

I'm happy to use dracut on my desktop computer with a LUKS-encrypted btrfs root partition.