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SubjectRe: Announce: initrd-tftp 0.1
We do that here with initrd. EPROM grabs kernel+ramdisk.
Machines then have / on the ramdisk. /usr is via NFS if
needed.

Dirk


On Sat, Jan 08, 2000 at 05:32:28PM +0000, Alex Holden wrote:
> On Sat, 8 Jan 2000 almesber@lrc.di.epfl.ch wrote:
> > Alex Holden wrote:
> > > The initial RAM disk tftp support is effectively a complete kernel-space
> > > TFTP client implementation, configured to load the initial RAM disk with a
> > > file (currently specified at compile time) obtained from a TFTP server.
> > If all you want is another RAM disk, you could just put all the tools
> > you need to download it on an initrd, then construct the RAM disk, and
> > then mount that one as root. Unless you're really badly limited for
> > space, this (i.e. a stripped-down user space tftp) should be a lot more
> > convenient to maintain.
>
> Maybe I explained badly what it does and what it's for. It's not for
> systems which can load a RAM disk or initrd normally. It's for systems
> which don't have the ability to load a ramdisk from a disk (because there
> isn't one), but do have the ability to load and execute a block of code
> (the kernel) from the network. This patch allows the kernel, once it's
> determined it's IP address, to load a file (optionally gzipped) from a
> tftp server and put it into /dev/ram0. You can then use it as an initrd
> if you want, or if you want to use it as your root filesystem just use
> root=/dev/ram on the command line (which is what I'm doing). It's intended
> to be used as a simpler, more reliable, easier to configure and maintain,
> alternative to mounting a remote filesystem using nfsroot and then copying
> it into a RAM disk for embedded systems which boot from the network but
> run completely from a RAM disk so they don't fall over whenever the
> network does.
>
> BTW, I ported it to 2.3 and improved it quite a bit. Now you can turn off
> the boot loader initrd support and still have the initrd-tftp work, and it
> also handles nicely the case where you have initrd-tftp compiled in, but
> don't want to use it. I consider it to be pretty much complete now and
> won't be putting any more work into it except for back porting the
> improvements to 2.2 unless somebody finds a bug in it.
>
> See:
> ftp://ftp.linuxhacker.org/pub/kernel/initrd-tftp/initrd-tftp.0.9.patch.gz
>
> That patch was against 2.3.36, but it should work fine with later kernels
> too. I sent it to Linus just after he released 2.3.36, but he didn't reply
> about whether he would consider including it or not.
>
> --------------- Linux- the choice of a GNU generation. --------------
> : Alex Holden (M1CJD)- Caver, Programmer, Land Rover nut, Radio Ham :
> -------------------- http://www.linuxhacker.org/ --------------------
>
>
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