dracut speed and kernel version

[Harald Hoyer]

On 10/12/2009 06:28 PM, Adam Pribyl wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Oct 2009, Harald Hoyer wrote:
>
>> On 10/09/2009 10:20 PM, Adam Pribyl wrote:
>>> This is my first time I was forced to "hand use" dracut, because
>>> initramfs build by kernel install does not work (due to kexec-tool bug).
>>>
>>> But I was surprised by few thinks:
>>>
>>> 1. dracut accepts as a kernel version non existing kernel name and
>>> builds the initramfs - this is really crazy (there are some warnings,
>>> but it tooks a bit of time before first "File does not exist".)
>>>
>>
>> You are right.. will add a precheck.
>>
>
> Thanks.
>
>>> 2. dracut initramfs build takes ages compared to mkinitrd
>>
>> Does it really matter? How often do you build an initramfs per week?
>>
>
> Well... speed allways mathers. I am not using it daily today, but
> remember the time when I was looking for proper module preload
> configuration for some rare scsi device and was building it very often.
> I am under impression that with every kernel build you need to
> regenerate initramfs, to have correct modules loaded on next reboot..
> and this I was used to do very often. Then every delay counts.

edit /etc/dracut.conf and enable the hostonly option, then you will have a fast 
initramfs build, as well as smaller images.

>
>>> 3. dracut spits some confusing warnings, I am not sure what to do with:
>>> W: Possible missing firmware aic94xx-seq.fw for module aic94xx.ko
>>> W: Possible missing firmware ql8100_fw.bin for module qla2xxx.ko
>>> W: Possible missing firmware ql2500_fw.bin for module qla2xxx.ko
>>> W: Possible missing firmware ql2400_fw.bin for module qla2xxx.ko
>>> W: Possible missing firmware ql2322_fw.bin for module qla2xxx.ko
>>> W: Possible missing firmware ql2300_fw.bin for module qla2xxx.ko
>>> W: Possible missing firmware ql2200_fw.bin for module qla2xxx.ko
>>> W: Possible missing firmware ql2100_fw.bin for module qla2xxx.ko
>>>
>>> Am I doin' something wrong or this is expected behaviour?
>>
>> Well, there are some modules which might require a firmware. Dracut is
>> only reporting that they are missing. Just in case...
>> Maybe I should suppress these warnings.. what do you think?
>
> I would suppress them, let them print in "debug" mode.
>
>>> Adam Pribyl
>
>
> Adam Pribyl
>