[klibc] Reason for gen_init_cpio instead of just cpio?

[Kevin P. Fleming]

H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>>If there's a good reason, I can certainly extend gen_init_cpio to do the
>>tree-walk and build the initramfs that way.
>>
> 
> 
> I think the reason is that it's desirable to be able to build a cpio
> archive including device nodes (e.g. /dev/console) without having to be
> root.
> 

Ahh, because a non-root user wouldn't be able to mknod underneath usr/root... so 
the template tree couldn't have device nodes in it. That's a sticky one.

I guess that means that gen_init_cpio may have to _both_ include a predefined 
list of initramfs contents as well as be able to walk the usr/root tree to get 
the rest of the stuff that's been built during the kernel compile. Any other 
type of file beyond a device node should be safe to be picked up that way.