[Pkg-uml-devel] rootstrap problems

[Mattia Dongili]

Hello,
[dropped uml-user as I'm only talking from the debian packaging
perspective]

I still haven't fully tested current debian uml related packages, and
I'm running uml on a vanilla 2.6.15, so read my comments with this in
your mind, since I was going to grow my own idea without looking much
at previous mdz work :)

On Wed, Jan 11, 2006 at 10:58:43PM +0100, Andreas Schuldei wrote:
> hi!
> 
> i am hacking on rootstrap here. for those unfamiliar with
> rootstrap: it is a bunch of python and shell scripts to create a
> new root filessytem image. it does that by running a uml and
> mounting the host's / filesystem as / using hostfs. 

Woa! is it really that complex? I thought it used debootstrap on a loop
mounted disk image... no, re-checked that must have been a dream.
But what do we gain with such an approach?

> i try to do two things: fix the problem with
> 
> request_module: runaway loop modprobe net-pf-1
> modprobe: FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.12/modules.dep: No such file or directory
> 
> (since on debian the hostfs has the uml modules in
> /usr/lib/uml/modules and the uml kernel expects them at
> /lib/modules).

Uh! What stops us using some fancy $(uname -r) and install in
/lib/modules in the guest rootfs? with the rootfs-on-loop it's just a
'cp' and you can still mount the host fs on a secondary disk.

> and i try to make rootstrap not depend on devfs. (currently
> rootstrap still uses the devfs=mount option.)

inside UML I'm using a static dev, will try udev shortly.
 
[...]
> those devices are non-standard. Even when I create those in my
> host's /dev/, I get oopses (which I did not have when using
> devfs). 

I don't. cd /dev/ && MAKEDEV ubd in the guest, but again my approach was
totally different :)

[...]
> since udev is a fat userspace program with lots of config etc i
> dont expect using it will fix the problem. or would it? if so,
> how?

hmmm... You mean using udev on the host and having / (and /dev/) on the
host fs? If so I strongly doubt it will as most probably the
host kernel won't send uevents when UML starts :)

ciao!
-- 
mattia
:wq!
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