initrd + busybox

[fanthom]

initrd and busybox are very important part of live distros as live system is "assembled" from modules at initrd booting stage. there is still a room for improvements in busybox configuration (the heart of initrd micro cosmos) and libs/drivers/firmware provided in the ram disk. if you want to share your experience with initrd or ask about something - please use this topic.

[jcas1411]

how do I tell which version of busybox I'm using?

[fanthom]

start slax and run /mnt/live/bin/busybox
you will see the version then

[Mithrandil]

are those config lines in the new busybox-1.18.1:

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#
# Filesystem/Volume identification
#
CONFIG_FEATURE_VOLUMEID_EXT=y
# CONFIG_FEATURE_VOLUMEID_BTRFS is not set
CONFIG_FEATURE_VOLUMEID_REISERFS=y
CONFIG_FEATURE_VOLUMEID_FAT=y
CONFIG_FEATURE_VOLUMEID_HFS=y
CONFIG_FEATURE_VOLUMEID_JFS=y
CONFIG_FEATURE_VOLUMEID_XFS=y
CONFIG_FEATURE_VOLUMEID_NTFS=y
CONFIG_FEATURE_VOLUMEID_ISO9660=y
CONFIG_FEATURE_VOLUMEID_UDF=y
CONFIG_FEATURE_VOLUMEID_LUKS=y
CONFIG_FEATURE_VOLUMEID_LINUXSWAP=y
CONFIG_FEATURE_VOLUMEID_CRAMFS=y
CONFIG_FEATURE_VOLUMEID_ROMFS=y
CONFIG_FEATURE_VOLUMEID_SYSV=y
CONFIG_FEATURE_VOLUMEID_OCFS2=y
CONFIG_FEATURE_VOLUMEID_LINUXRAID=y

related to /dev/disk/by-id ?
if yes, it's and interesting feature, you could force linuxrc to boot from a specific device (from=/dev/disk/by-id/$ID/$DISTRONAME)

[fanthom]

@Mithrandil
compiled busybox-1.18.1 with blkid support (and VOLUMEID support) but it still shows:

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/dev/sda3: UUID="7af60ce6-35c3-44d7-96b1-98ca04d20b8d"

while i need:

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/dev/sda3: UUID="7af60ce6-35c3-44d7-96b1-98ca04d20b8d" TYPE="reiserfs"

(i need TYPE= for filling up fstab with proper fs type)
here is my config:
http://pastebin.com/U69Ty4qA

Any clues?

[Mithrandil]

i'm getting

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pixielive@pixielive ~ $ cat /mnt/live/var/log/blkid.log 
/dev/loop0: TYPE="squashfs" 
/dev/loop1: TYPE="squashfs" 
/dev/sda1: UUID="EE64B80564B7CF19" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sda3: LABEL="PE" UUID="CCED-990E" TYPE="vfat" 
/dev/sda5: UUID="7f3ecb12-74a1-44ae-9759-5c2f6953f518" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sda6: UUID="a61a7282-e11a-40c7-ba6b-60c986a124bc" TYPE="ext3" 
/dev/sda7: UUID="10568c28-85ea-44a2-92a3-a3d7ec158571" TYPE="swap" 
/dev/sda8: UUID="0125cfaf-9d6b-4569-b3a4-0b062cca4c6b" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sdb1: UUID="1992-085B" TYPE="vfat" 
/dev/sdc1: UUID="A5E7-7246" TYPE="vfat" 

with both 1.17.4 and 1.18.1 http://pastebin.com/qqzsr98G

[fanthom]

are you sure that your output comes from blkid which is built into busybox and not /mnt/live/bin/blkid binary?
show me the output of:
"/mnt/live/bin/busybox blkid"

[Mithrandil]

are you sure that your output comes from blkid which is built into busybox and not /mnt/live/bin/blkid binary?
show me the output of:
"/mnt/live/bin/busybox blkid"

ehm... i didn't compile blkid into the busybox... it's from /mnt/live/bin/blkid

[Quax]

Hi Fanthom,

you should use busybox 1.0.19 from git:

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root@fluxflux: /mnt/sdb4/busybox # ./busybox --help
BusyBox v1.19.0.git (2011-01-21 19:23:25 CET) multi-call binary.
Copyright (C) 1998-2009 Erik Andersen, Rob Landley, Denys Vlasenko
and others. Licensed under GPLv2.
See source distribution for full notice.

Usage: busybox [function] [arguments]...
   or: busybox --list[-full]
   or: function [arguments]...

	BusyBox is a multi-call binary that combines many common Unix
	utilities into a single executable.  Most people will create a
	link to busybox for each function they wish to use and BusyBox
	will act like whatever it was invoked as.

Currently defined functions:
	[, [[, ash, blkid, cat, chmod, chroot, cp, cut, df, dmesg, egrep,
	fgrep, find, free, grep, halt, head, ifconfig, kill, killall, killall5,
	ln, losetup, ls, lsmod, mdev, mkdir, mknod, modprobe, mount, mv, pidof,
	ping, pivot_root, poweroff, ps, pstree, reboot, rm, rmdir, rmmod,
	route, sed, sh, sleep, sort, sync, tail, test, touch, udhcpc, umount,
	uname, vi

root@fluxflux: /mnt/sdb4/busybox # ln -s busybox blkid
root@fluxflux: /mnt/sdb4/busybox # ./blkid /dev/sda1
/dev/sda1: LABEL="FF-System" UUID="b30e1bc7-ef64-4220-81b0-a370458fb073" TYPE="ext2"
root@fluxflux: /mnt/sdb4/busybox # 

You can use the binary appended to this thread

Regards, Quax

btw: Could you please post your version of live-scripts somewhere?

[fanthom]

Tanks a lot Quax!
just compiled busybox from git, updated linuxrc, got rid of /bin/blkid + /lib/libuuid + /lib/libblkid and works!
200KB removed from initrd

I dont have standard version of LLS, all what i have is included in initrd.lz (linuxrc, fatal, cleanup):
http://ponce.cc/porteus/i486/current/clean_initrd.lz
You wont be able to use it to build live system automatically.
With little tweaks you should be able to get it to work with fluxflux-sl. My version doesn't load any kernel module during boot (except for nls and network drivers for PXE boot). Everything is build into porteus kernel: aufs, squashfs, fuse, usb drivers, etc
Also - it doesn't create /dev/console and /dev/null inside the union (they are provided inside 001-core).

this is list of updated cheatcodes (some were added/removed/renamed):
http://pastebin.com/zYQ5RNFv

if you decide to go with my version then i'll be glad to help you with required tweaks. please dont hesitate to ask about anything.

EDIT:\\
spoke little bit too soon: libblkid and libuuid are required for porteus 'fsck' feature. Also - blkid included in busybox doesn't recognize ext4 properly and btrfs at all. Hopefully they will fix it for final release.