Re: A fuse based initfs

["Jon Nettleton" <jon nettleton gmail com>]

On 8/23/07, Jon Nettleton <jon nettleton gmail com> wrote:
> On 8/23/07, Andrew Bartlett <abartlet samba org> wrote:
> > On Thu, 2007-08-23 at 18:02 -0400, Jon Nettleton wrote:
> > > On 8/22/07, Douglas McClendon <dmc fedora filteredperception org> wrote:
> >
> > > >
> > > > In general, it sounds like you are outlining several different
> > > > problem/solutions, but I don't think they all need to be as tightly
> > > > integrated as you suggest.
> > > >
> > > > For instance, the gdm in initramfs (or very very early).  Why do you
> > > > need this copy-on-write rootfs stuff?  Why not just have a tmpfs, and a
> > > > gdm configuration that looks there.  Likewise for the early logging
> > > > stuff.  Later during boot, the early-boot logfiles in tmpfs can be
> > > > copied to /var/log.  This isn't as nice as the magic
> > > > unionfs/dm-snapshot-merge automagic merging.  But I don't think that is
> > > > necessary and worth the steps you are taking to get it.
> > >
> > > The problem is that all the X gdm talk is through fifo sockets.  This
> > > busies the filesystems
> > > and makes it impossible to just copy things around.  If we want the
> > > boot process to be
> > > smooth and seamless we are going to need some sort of ability to write
> > > to a "read only" filesystem in place.
> >
> > Why not just put the fifo on a tmpfs, and keep it around for the life of
> > the system.  Being tmpfs, it cleans up nicely when shut down.  There are
> > many other reasons to move the X socket from /tmp (selinux etc).
> >
> > Would a permanent symlink from /tmp -> a tmpfs mounted on /var/run/X
> > solve the legacy issues?
> >
>
> That only leaves some log issues.  However if other people have no
> problems with /var/run/X and /var/run/gdm being tmpfs or ramfs then
> this is do-able.
>

actually thinking about this.  Moving these files to a tmpfs/ramfs
filesystem will actually allow us to remove a bunch of cleanup code in
rc.sysinit for stale filehandles and directories.

hmmm...this is sounding better by the minute.

Jon