Re: mkinitrd update discussion/survey

On Sat, Feb 26, 2005 at 10:55:32AM +0100, Benjamin Schieder wrote:
[...]
> 
> | 2)	[ on pivot_root ]
> | 3)	Although I have not yet entirely implemented it, I have always
> | 	wanted to set up (especially my servers at the office) with
> | 	busybox, basic tools, and dropbear sshd.  If e2fsck fails, or
> | 	any of the annoyances that could cause the boot process to hang,
> | 	just bring up a network, fire up an sshd, and start sending mail
> | 	to anybody who might be able to fix it.
> That's something I never thought about but actually makes more sense
> than I thought at first read.

in fact that's almost the exact way how the rescue target's
lvm-boot-cycle works.

> 
> | 4)	Also on my presonal 'things to break list':  An encrypted root
> | 	partition, a boot partition as described above, but it always
> | 	brings up sshd -- which allows the admin of the system to ssh
> | 	in and enter the passphrase for the root partition.
> Now here's finally a way how I can encrypt my rootfs :D
> 
> | 	Anyway, once the passphrase is entered and the fix is in, just
> | 	tell the system to continue (in an unspecified and murky mystical
> | 	way ... I guess one could start sshd in debug mode, so it exits
> | 	after each connection) and it completes the boot process.
> Just using a special "shell" that exits after successful mounting of the
> rootfs should be fine here.
> 
> Care to share what you've got so far?
> If I got that right it might be possible to use Tobias' rescue target
> for this purpose quite fine. Also I've been looking for a way to more
> easily get encryption going than to mount a monitor and keyboard to my
> server :/

you don't imply that that's necessary with rescue, do you? of course
it's not.
> 
> Tobias, any thoughts on whether that's possible without tweaking it too
> much?

i was planning to implement some improvments to the rescue target. the
idea is to face one problem that rescue has: it extracts a too big
stage2 even if stage2 is only used to boot-cycle (e.g. prepare root and
mount chroot/pivotroot). my plan is to split the system-tar into
multiple tar's: one with the absolute must have (linuxrc, shell, et al)
and the last one with the full featured rescue system incl. getty's as
you get it now by extracting the system-tar.

i'll put some more brain in it...

i think i can come up with a nice rescue-soltution even for the boot
process.

th
--

> 
> Anyone else got thoughts here? I'd like to revamp the boot process to
> allow for this kind of stuff easily.
> 
> 
> Greetings,
> 	blindy
> 
> - --
> Benjamin 'blindCoder' Schieder
> Registered Linux User #289529: http://counter.li.org
> finger blindcoder-1k+CIuW/[email protected] | gpg --import
> - --
> /lusr/bin/brain: received signal: SIGIDIOT
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> iD8DBQFCIEeT7Wabow2Um2YRAhsRAJ9Qh6AAgiddbCBDKX3jC/fNhMzdmgCfeP0j
> rC53GkrxrPqr+UgGZQEXUEU=
> =FEPe
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-- 
Tobias Hintze http://hbs-solutions.de
HBS solutions GbR - Network & Information Systems