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Not related to this change in particular, but: mkinitcpio is neat to me because it is one of the last pieces of bespoke distro-specific software that's stayed o

Not related to this change in particular, but: mkinitcpio is neat to me because it is one of the last pieces of bespoke distro-specific software that's stayed on my radar. It used to be that distros had to come up with huge piles of distro-specific scripting to build a complete system, but the trend has been to create independent projects so that each distro doesn't need to reinvent things. Distros used to have a lot of custom bootup scripts, which have been largely replaced by modular components of systemd. For many distros, the scripts for creating the init ramdisk have been replaced by Dracut; but not on Arch Linux and derivatives, Dave Reisner's mkinitcpio is still going strong. And it's interesting that Arch is being a holdout with Dracut, when they were one of the first adopters of systemd.

throwmkinit 5y ago
Is there a good reason for this? The last I read [0], Dave didn't think that mkinitcpio was the way forward. I've since migrated my setup to use dracut and haven't looked back. Is it just inertia that's kept mkinitcpio alive? [0]: https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2019-May/029570.html https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2019-M...
- Foxboron 5y ago
  No, the last update was that the plan is to keep mkinitcpio and other alternatives maintained. https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2021-February/030344.html https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2021-F... This is also why I started writing up the feature.
- random53 5y ago
  How was the migration? Any potential pitfalls?
  - throwmkinit 5y ago
    Relatively straight-forward once you read up on alpm hooks [0] to make sure you're rebuilding the init at the right times. The wiki [1] has working examples that are drop-in dracut replacements for /usr/share/libalpm/scripts/mkinitcpio-{install,remove}. Dracut also makes it easy to build unified kernel images that can be signed for secure boot, which I never figured out how to do with mkinitcpio. [0] https://man.archlinux.org/man/alpm-hooks.5 https://man.archlinux.org/man/alpm-hooks.5 [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dracut https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dracut
Teknoman117 5y ago
Another one is genkernel from Gentoo (although you can use dracut as well).

throwmkinit 5y ago

Is there a good reason for this? The last I read [0], Dave didn't think that mkinitcpio was the way forward. I've since migrated my setup to use dracut and haven't looked back. Is it just inertia that's kept mkinitcpio alive? [0]: https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2019-May/029570.html https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2019-M...

Foxboron 5y ago
No, the last update was that the plan is to keep mkinitcpio and other alternatives maintained. https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2021-February/030344.html https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2021-F... This is also why I started writing up the feature.
random53 5y ago
How was the migration? Any potential pitfalls?
- throwmkinit 5y ago
  Relatively straight-forward once you read up on alpm hooks [0] to make sure you're rebuilding the init at the right times. The wiki [1] has working examples that are drop-in dracut replacements for /usr/share/libalpm/scripts/mkinitcpio-{install,remove}. Dracut also makes it easy to build unified kernel images that can be signed for secure boot, which I never figured out how to do with mkinitcpio. [0] https://man.archlinux.org/man/alpm-hooks.5 https://man.archlinux.org/man/alpm-hooks.5 [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dracut https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dracut

Teknoman117 5y ago

Another one is genkernel from Gentoo (although you can use dracut as well).