funtoo-ramdisk 1.1.15

Funtoo framework for creating initial ramdisks.

Author:

Daniel Robbins <[e-mail]>

Copyright:

Copyright 2023-2024 Daniel Robbins, Funtoo Solutions, Inc. Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.

Version:

1.1.15

Manual section:

8

Manual group:

Funtoo Linux

SYNOPSIS

ramdisk [build] [OPTION…] initramfs_outfile

ramdisk list kernels

ramdisk list plugins

DESCRIPTION

The Funtoo ramdisk tool, called ramdisk is a stand-alone tool to create an initial RAM disk filesystem (initramfs) for booting your Linux system.

The internal initramfs logic is based on the logic found in Gentoo Linux’s genkernel tool, but has been rewritten to be simpler and more efficient.

You can use this tool to create an initramfs to boot to a Funtoo Linux root ext4 or XFS filesystem, which is what we support in our official installation documentation at https://www.funtoo.org/Install.

CAPABILITIES

• genkernel-style initramfs without the cruft. In comparison to genkernel’s initramfs, the shell code is about 10x simpler and a lot cleaner and has been modernized. About 100 lines of shell script, with another 215 lines of functions in a support file.

• Copies over the modules you specify – and automatically figures out any kernel module dependencies, so any depended-upon modules are also copied. This eliminates the need to track these dependencies manually.

• Rootless operation. You do not need enhanced privileges to create the initramfs.

• You can read the linuxrc script and actually understand what it does. It is written to be easy to understand and adapt. So it’s not just short, but easy to grasp.

• Enhanced module loading engine on the initramfs which is significantly faster than genkernel. This effectively eliminates the “watching the stream of useless modules being loaded” issue with genkernel. Modern systems with NVMe drives will load just a handful of modules to boot – all without requiring any special action from the user.

• “kpop” functionality allows for building ramdisks with just the modules you need. For example, ramdisk --kpop=nvme,ext4 will create a ramdisk that can boot on NVMe ext4 root filesystems, and only include these necessary modules, leaving all other modules to be loaded by your Funtoo Linux system.

• Effective Python-based command to actually build the ramdisk, which is called: ramdisk. This gives us an extensible platform for the future.

• Enhanced ini-style system for selecting modules to include on your initramfs.

• Enhanced ini-style system for selecting module groups to autoload on the initramfs.

• Support for xz and zstd compression.

ACTIONS

The default action is build, and can be optionally specified, which will instruct ramdisk to build an initramfs. Available actions:

build

Create an initramfs. See OPTIONS below for all options supported. The build action requires a destination initramfs path. This will be the literal path and filename for the output initramfs. Use --force to overwrite any existing file.

list

List various things – currently supported targets are kernels and plugins. kernels will show you a list of available installed kernels on your system for which you can build a ramdisk, and plugins will show the available boot-time plugins that can be enabled to add more functionality to your ramdisk.

OPTIONS

--debug

Enable debug output.

--backtrace

Display full python backtrace/traceback instead of just a short error summary.

--force

Overwrite target initramfs if it exists. The command will refuse to do so by default.

--keep

Keep the temporary directory after execution for investigation/debugging.

--version

Show this program’s version number and exit.

--help

Show this help message and exit.

--fs_foot=<path>

This defaults to /, and specifies the filesystem root to look at for finding both kernel sources (in /usr/src) and kernel modules (in /lib/modules). This option also applies to ramdisk list kernels.

--kernel=<kernel>

Specify what kernel to build a ramdisk for. Use ramdisk list kernels to display available options. The default setting is to use the current value of the /usr/src/linux symlink at the filesystem root to determine which kernel to build a ramdisk for.

--compression=<method>

Compression method to use. Default is xz. Also supported: zstd.

--temp_root=<path>

Where to create temporary files. Defaults to /var/tmp.

--plugins=<plugins>

A comma-delimited list of plugins to enable. The core plugin is always enabled. Type ramdisk list plugins to see a list of available plugins.

--kmod_config=<cfg>

ramdisk supports different sets of kernel module configurations, which define what kernel modules get copied to the initramfs, and which ones get auto-loaded by the initramfs at boot. Default value: full. This is currently the only option unless overridden by --kpop (see below.)

--kpop=<mods>

A comma-delimited list of kernel module names that you are sure, if loaded, will allow your root block device and filesystem to be mounted. For example, --kpop=nvme,ext4 will include just the modules required for booting NVMe disks and mounting your root ext4 filesystem. When this option is used, a special minimal kernel module config is used instead of what is specified via --kmod_config (see above).

USAGE

In its simplest form, the command can be used as follows, as a regular user:

$ ramdisk /var/tmp/my-new-initramfs
$ sudo cp /var/tmp/my-new-initramfs /boot

By default, ramdisk will use your /usr/src/linux symlink to determine which kernel to use to build a ramdisk for. It will parse /usr/src/linux/Makefile, extract kernel version information, and then find the appropriate directory in /lib/modules/<kernel_name> for copying modules. You can type: ramdisk list kernels and ramdisk --kernel <kernel_name> to build a ramdisk for a non-default kernel.

Since this is brand-new software, it is highly recommended that you DO NOT OVERWRITE YOUR EXISTING, WORKING INITRAMFS THAT YOU CURRENTLY USE TO BOOT YOUR SYSTEM.

Instead – create a NEW BOOT ENTRY to test your initramfs. In GRUB, you can also press ‘e’ to edit an entry and type in the name of the new initramfs to give it a try.

INITRAMFS BOOT OPTIONS

The following options are recognized by the initramfs and should be separated by whitespace on the kernel boot line. In Funtoo Linux, you would add them to /etc/boot.conf – see boot.conf(5).

real_root=

This is used to specify the root device that we want to mount and boot.

root=

This is not used right now but will be used for live media booting.

real_init=

Defaults to /sbin/init – what to run as PID 1 when booting your system.

init_opts=

Defaults to empty – what command-line options to pass to PID 1.

shell

Start a debug shell immediately before booting your system. This will allow you to inspect the state of the initramfs. Exiting the shell will resume the normal boot process.

debug

Enable debug mode. More verbose output and dmesg after boot will display additional debug information for later review.

quick

On by default, this tells the initramfs to opportunistically see if the root block device is available during modules scanning to avoid loading all modules.

slow

This disables the “quick” option and exhaustively loads all modules before looking for a root block device.

ramdisk.activate=

A comma-delimited list of plugins to enable at boot-time. For example, set this to “lvm” to enable LVM boot.

ramdisk.scan_mode=

Currently defaulting to “legacy” which is the only option, and means “do the classic genkernel thing and manually load modules from our modules list.``. I hope to add dynamic loading of modules via (e)udev soon, which will become a new option.

magic=

This is a comma-delimited “magic” list of modules that you have determined are needed to boot your system. When this option is specified, the initramfs will load only these modules and then try to find the root device. This can be used to test out which modules you need to specify for the --kpop option by testing with a regular fully-populated initramfs. Once you figure out the modules you need, you can then reduce the size of the initramfs by using the --kpop options which will only oopy the those specified modules (and their dependencies) to the initramfs.

real_rootflags=

Specify mount flags to pass to the mount command for your root filesystem mount. A ro will always be at the beginning of this setting. Defaults to blank.

rootfstype=

Specify the filesystem type for your root filesystem. This is currently a required option and is set by ego boot.

ChangeLog

funtoo-ramdisk 1.1.15

Released on April 28, 2024.

This is a feature and bug fix release. 1.1.14 contains the same code but is missing this ChangeLog update and more detail to the lsblk output for rescue shell.

• Add man page options on the kernel boot options for the initramfs.

• Add lsblk to the initramfs and use it to generate nice output when falling to the rescue shell to aid troubleshooting.

• Only print errors if we have problems loading kpop modules. Otherwise ignore errors. Most modules don’t throw errors and fail to load when the underlying hardware is not found, but there are exceptions to this that was previously cluttering output.

• FL-12290: Include “vmscsi” modules definition to enable SCSI boot support for VirtualBox and likely other VMs, and make this fairly high priority in the scan order.

funtoo-ramdisk 1.1.13

Released on April 23, 2024.

This is a bug fix release.

• Integrate siris’ PR which gets the lvm plugin working under Funtoo. This should allow for official support of LVM root filesystems.

funtoo-ramdisk 1.1.12

Released on April 19, 2024.

This is a bug fix release.

• Fix man page generation (docutils recently renamed rst2man.py to rst2man)

funtoo-ramdisk 1.1.11

Released on April 17, 2024.

This is a feature release.

• Linux 6.6+ now builds and installs kernel modules with the .ko.xz suffix. This requires several code updates to support this new naming scheme. This is the initial implementation and there may be additional needed fixes for things like the initramfs after this is tested using this updated initramfs-build code.

funtoo-ramdisk 1.1.10

Released on April 16, 2024.

This is a minor bug fix release.

• Attempting to fix an issue where the temporary kernel modules directory is not properly created, resulting in an error.

funtoo-ramdisk 1.1.9

Released on April 16, 2024.

This is a minor feature release.

• Add a --keep option which will preserve the contents of the temporary directory so that errors and tracebacks can be investigated. This can be enabled via ebuilds to allow exploration of any ramdisk- related errors.

• Improve handling of a permissions error when copying the ramdisk to a final location (provide error message instead of full traceback.)

funtoo-ramdisk 1.1.8

Released on April 16, 2024.

This is a minor bug release.

• Fix for the previous fix.

funtoo-ramdisk 1.1.7

Released on April 15, 2024.

This is a minor bug release.

• Fix a possible issue where __pycache__ directories can mess up copying of files to the initramfs.

funtoo-ramdisk 1.1.6

Released on April 14, 2024.

This is a maintenance and minor features release.

• Various minor bug fixes.

• Change --enable to --plugins since it’s more self-explanatory.

• Continue to flesh out the plugin system. I added support for plugins to have an activation script which will get executed on startup. This is a work in progress and I still need to add support for listing needed modules for a plugin which will get loaded automatically.

• Fix a bug in argument parsing where the code was not scanning for invalid options which could result in odd parsing behavior.

• Start adding support for udev. This is not yet completed but the plugin system for this has been incorporated into the linuxrc.

funtoo-ramdisk 1.1.5

Released on September 15, 2023.

This is a packaging fix for the manpage.

funtoo-ramdisk 1.1.4

Released on September 15, 2023.

This release adds a “ramdisk” man page.

funtoo-ramdisk 1.1.3

Released on September 14, 2023.

• FL-11606: /sbin/blkid can’t be run as non-root, and will trigger a sandbox violation inside an ebuild. So don’t do it – we were just running it to convieniently spit out the UUID for the user to put in their /etc/fstab. Now we instruct the user to run blkid as root and avoid the sandbox violation.

funtoo-ramdisk 1.1.2

Released on September 4, 2023.

• Fix exit code (zero on success.)

funtoo-ramdisk 1.1.1

Released on September 4, 2023.

Fix three bugs:

• Allow plugins to be loaded when installed in site-packages.

• Don’t assume /usr/src/linux symlink exists in two places and handle this situation gracefully. This situation may exist during metro builds on incomplete systems. (2 bugs fixed).

funtoo-ramdisk 1.1.0

Released on September 3, 2023.

• Add plugin system for ramdisk:

  To use, pass --enable=<plugin1>,<plugin2>. The core plugin is always enabled and copies /sbin/blkid. There are currently btrfs and lvm plugins as well – these are not yet fully-implemented and just ensure necessary binaries are copied over (no extra setup commands are run by the initramfs.)

  This is a starting point for enabling support for advanced features on the initramfs.

• New “module configurations”. The default module configuration is “full”, which means “make a ramdisk with lots of modules to support a lot of hardware.” Different module configurations can be added in the future. Module configurations can be specified via --kmod_config=.

• --kpop= feature to make minimal module ramdisks by specifying a dynamic module configuration via the command-line, rather than via static config files.

  If you specify --kpop=nvme,ext4 then a ramdisk with just those modules (and their dependencies) will be included. This can dramatically reduce the size of your ramdisk. Note that this doesn’t include the necessary modules to allow USB keyboards to work in the rescue shell, so it’s only for known-good configurations. Enabling this feature also disables any static module configuration (see above.)

• Change the binary plugin API so lists of binaries can be dynamically created and programmatic decisions can be made. Previously, we used a static list. This allows us to use lvm.static if available, but fall back to dynamic lvm, for example.

• To support kpop functionality, the ability to add a module by its basic name, not just via its full path or glob, was added to modules.copy.

• Modules code can now accept modules.copy and modules.autoload as dynamically-generated line data rather than just as static files that must exist on the filesystem. (Again, used by kpop).

• linuxrc has been improved/fixed to not have a hard-coded list of module groups to try to load, and instead use the modules.autoload groups to determine these.

• ramdisk list kernels and ramdisk list plugins actions added. The former makes use of ramdisk --kernel <kv> easier because it prints the available kernel names which can be copy/pasted for the --kernel option.

• Implemented our own argument parsing as argparse was not worth using.

• Lots of code organized into their own .py files.

• Make /etc/fstab sanity check a warning as this file may not be set up at all if doing a metro build.

• Disable colors if we don’t have an interactive shell.

funtoo-ramdisk 1.0.7

Released on August 22, 2023.

Changes:

• Get rid of --modules_root. Instead, added --fs_root which specifies where modules and the kernel sources will be. This allows the tool to work from an ebuild.

• Improve output and add nice colors. Optimize information to be more useful to users.

funtoo-ramdisk 1.0.6

Released on August 21, 2023.

Two new options:

• --modules_root to set the root filesystem to scan for modules. It defaults to /.

• --temp_root to set the default path to use for creating a

  temporary directory. It defaults to /var/tmp.

funtoo-ramdisk 1.0.5

Released on August 21, 2023.

This is a features/maintenance/bug fix release.

In addition to a bunch of minor fixes and clean-ups, which you can view in the git history, the following significant changes were made:

• Use kmod /sbin/modprobe instead of busybox’s modprobe. Busybox’s modprobe may be fine, but for it to work, we must use busybox’s depmod – and we’re not. We’re using kmod’s. So for now, let’s just copy the right modprobe over. This fixes an issue where we get invalid symbols when loading modules using busybox modprobe. modprobe is now resolving deps properly! :)

  At some point, we could make a “toggle” to select kmod/busybox mode. The best time to run depmod for busybox is probably once the ramdisk first boots, since it doesn’t have a “root” option, making it hard to call from our ramdisk script.

• Remove unused control character definitions in initrd.defaults.

• Mitigate an issue where ash shell could start before all USB keyboards have been detected, resulting in lack of input. We now wait 5 seconds before starting a rescue shell, to give the kernel time to enumerate devices on the USB2/3 bus. This isn’t a full fix, but should resolve the problem of ash starting and not having any way to type, because it didn’t connect to your main keyboard.

Try to work around issues related to ATA/SCSI disk enumeration which could prevent the root filesystem from being mounted (see FL-11532).

• Detect when a user has a /dev/sd* root block device and warn them that this is not a good idea, and can cause problems if you have multiple disks. Show them how to fix the problem by switching to UUID.

• Remove scsi_debug module which is evil and if we force-load it, will create a new SCSI device 8MB in size and trigger the problem above for anyone with a SATA disk.

• To implement above feature, added a feature to allow masking of modules in modules.copy via “-mod_shortname” in a specific section. Also added a lot of sanity checking and warnings. If you happen to mask a module in the wrong section, so it still gets included on the initramfs due to other section(s), we will warn you.

funtoo-ramdisk 1.0.4

Released on August 18, 2023.

This is a maintenance/bug fix release.

• Fix ability to run from the git repo. This wasn’t working.

• Fix issue found by grouche, where if a module is built-in to the kernel but listed in modules.autoload, ramdisk would throw an error because it would think it’s not copied to the initramfs. We now read in the modules.builtin file and use this in the internal logic – if a module is built-in to the kernel, we can not worry if it is our modules.autoload list. We still have it. We will also not worry about trying to load it at boot.

• Add a debug output whenever a module is referenced that is actually a built-in. This helps to audit the behavior of the above functionality and could be useful to users of the tool as well.

• Announce we are in debug mode with log.info() instead of a warning. Looks a bit nicer.