Re: Query about initramfs and modules

David Garfield (garfield@irving.iisd.sra.com)
Tue, 15 Jan 2002 18:47:44 -0500


Greg KH writes:
> On Tue, Jan 15, 2002 at 06:15:02PM -0500, David Garfield wrote:
> >
> > Can/will the initramfs mechanism be made to implicitly load into the
> > kernel the modules (or some of the modules) in the image?
>
> Most of the mechanism for loading modules for physical devices will be
> the /sbin/hotplug interface:
> - when the pci core code scans the pci bus, and finds a new
> device, it calls out to /sbin/hotplug the pci device
> information.
> - /sbin/hotplug looks up the pci device info and tries to match
> it up with a driver that will work for this device (see the
> linux-hotplug.sf.net site for more info on how this works.)
> - if it finds a module for the device, it calls modprobe on the
> module, and now that pci device has a module loaded.
>
> Repeat this process for the USB, IEEE1394, and other busses that support
> MODULE_DEVICE_TABLE in the kernel tree.

Seems like a great idea *after* the system is fully running (or the
root partition is at least mounted).

Seems like overkill to boot most systems.

As I understand it, all that should need to go into the initramfs is
enough to mount the root partition. Normally, this would probably be
a handful of drivers that are unconditionally known to be needed. So
why go through several user-mode programs to make a decision that can
be made once and built in?

--David Garfield
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