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Tasklist

FS#32961 - [linux] Build in basic kernel modules for faster & more robust boot

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Marti (intgr) - Tuesday, 04 December 2012, 18:06 GMT
Last edited by Tobias Powalowski (tpowa) - Wednesday, 02 January 2013, 15:27 GMT
Task Type Feature Request
Category Packages: Core
Status Closed
Assigned To Tobias Powalowski (tpowa)
Thomas Bächler (brain0)
Architecture All
Severity Low
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 2
Private No

Details

Back in July there was a thread on the mailing list to build in most common storage modules (ext4, ahci, ata_piix, etc) into the kernel, instead as modules, to increase boot robustness of the mkinitcpio image:
https://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2012-July/023300.html

By request from the discussion, pkgstats was updated to collect kernel module statistics:
https://www.archlinux.de/?page=ModuleStatistics

This is also suggested in an article by Lennart Poettering to speed up boot time:
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/Optimizations

Can we have essential modules built in now, pretty please? :)
This task depends upon

Closed by  Tobias Powalowski (tpowa)
Wednesday, 02 January 2013, 15:27 GMT
Reason for closing:  Won't implement
Comment by John (graysky) - Tuesday, 04 December 2012, 20:43 GMT
Just curious how having these built into the kernel will increase the robustness of mkiniticpio.
Comment by Marti (intgr) - Tuesday, 04 December 2012, 20:54 GMT
Basically it would make it possible to boot the system (if the above modules are sufficient) even if your initramfs is missing or has modules from the wrong kernel version etc. From the mailing list thread:

On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 12:01:22AM +0200, Tom Gundersen wrote:
> The underlying problem is that in principle you might (as I did)
> upgrade your kernel without running mkinitcpio. We have seen pacman
> issues causing this, simple crashes as what I had might cause it, or a
> broken mkinitcpio.conf might do it (I guess the last one could be
> worked around by adding a special preset that does not care about user
> config).
Comment by Thomas Bächler (brain0) - Monday, 10 December 2012, 09:39 GMT
I see no problem with the robustness of mkinitcpio. I cannot remember my last unsuccessful boot due to mkinitcpio breakage, but it must have been 4 years ago.

I am unsure what you are trying to achieve, and I generally don't like making our kernel less modular. As you mention ahci - "only" 70% of our machines use it.
Comment by Marti (intgr) - Monday, 10 December 2012, 14:39 GMT
> I cannot remember my last unsuccessful boot due to mkinitcpio breakage, but it must have been 4 years ago.
> I am unsure what you are trying to achieve

If you read the linked discussion, Tom Gundersen and Dave Reisner thought it was a good idea still this July. If they have reconsidered -- so be it. But this isn't just "my" idea.
Comment by Jan de Groot (JGC) - Monday, 17 December 2012, 12:50 GMT
I don't see the point either. It's nice if your hardware or filesystem is supported without additional kernel modules, but what's the point in loading ext4 and AHCI when you're using XFS or btrfs on a system equipped with a SAS RAID controller?

I remember the old days when nobody in our team knew how to build an initrd image... two bloated kernels, one for IDE, one for SCSI... we made this modular for a reason.

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