[Pkg-ltsp-devel] iniramfs-tools workaround

[Vagrant Cascadian]

so, when stratus tried out the latest and greatest ltsp packages for
debian, apparently nfsmount from klibc-utils, used by initramfs-tools,
was not working out.

i'm thinking/guessing/hoping that the problem is related to debian bug:

 #377643: initramfs-tools: Should retry if nfsmount fails.

so, i've figured out a workaround that we could possible use for ltsp
that might work sufficiently that we could upload new packages... (and
hopefully that bug will get fixed in initramfs-tools directly- i'm
working on some patches for it).

essentially, something like this:

/etc/initramfs-tools/hooks/ltsp-nfsmount-retry:

#!/bin/sh

. /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hook-functions

mkdir -p ${DESTDIR}/usr/local/bin/
copy_exec /usr/lib/ltsp/nfsmount-retry /usr/local/bin/nfsmount


and /usr/lib/ltsp/nfsmount-retry:

#!/bin/sh

while true ; do
  /bin/nfsmount $@ && break
  echo "retrying nfs mount..."
  sleep 5
done


this actually more closely resembles in-kernel nfsroot behavior
(infinite retries), though we might want to implement a break condition
other than success or something.

we could also implement code in the hook that only includes this hack
for initramfs-tools versions of certain ranges.

another option, possibly in addition to the retry loop, would be to
include a real /bin/mount... it bloats the initramfs image, but it seems
to be much more stable :)

i really hope these workarounds are sufficient so we can upload new
packages and shake out other bugs!

live well,
  vagrant