[klibc] kinit, fstabs and mountpoints on the command line

[H. Peter Anvin]

On 11/04/2011 10:52 AM, Mike Waychison wrote:
> San and I were working out some of the requirements we have for
> booting VMs, and we'd like to "construct" the environment dynamically
> from the "outside".  Not all VMs will have block devices (many will
> likely be using 9p heavily).  We'd like to continue to use kinit for
> this purpose, though at the moment, kinit is processing the root*=
> flags as the equivalent of a one-line fstab, though we'd like to also
> mount other mountpoints before execing the "init=" flag.
> 
> Now, I'm wondering if it would make sense to extend the command line
> flags understood by kinit to allow specifying other mountpoints
> (fstype, source, options), or if the right approach is to use a real
> fstab in the initramfs (which can be overlayed by using the kernel's
> overlaying of initramfs trees on top of the built-in initramfs trees).
> 
> I still don't like the fact that kinit may soon be mounting /sys,
> /proc, /dev for the next root image (as this breaks our production
> environment where these are not expected to be mounted by the time the
> init-on-disk).  Maybe having support for an fstab processed by kinit
> would be the best middle ground for this sort of thing?
> 
> Thoughts?
> 

Having an fstab might not be a bad idea for the complex configurations,
and would also add a clean way to mount /sys, /proc, /dev (if you want
them, just put them in the fstab)...

	-hpa

-- 
H. Peter Anvin, Intel Open Source Technology Center
I work for Intel.  I don't speak on their behalf.