Re: dracut-ng

[Stefan Schantl <stefan.schantl@ipfire.org>]

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Am 7. September 2025 20:27:08 schrieb Adolf Belka <adolf.belka@ipfire.org>:

> Hi Stefan,
>
> On 07/09/2025 19:50, Adolf Belka wrote:
>> Hi Stefan,
>>
>> On 07/09/2025 19:09, Stefan Schantl wrote:
>>> Hi Adolf,
>>>> Hi Stefan,
>>>>
>>>> On 07/09/2025 14:29, Stefan Schantl wrote:
>>>>> Hello Adolf,
>>>>>> Hi Michael & all,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 02/09/2025 16:00, Michael Tremer wrote:
>>>>>>> Hello Adolf,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Yes, I would be happy for you to give this a try.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Since Harald Hoyer has left RedHat, it seems that dracut has
>>>>>>> effectively been abandoned and dracut-ng is the successor with
>>>>>>> pretty much the same people contributing to it.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I did not find any breaking changes in the change log (although
>>>>>>> it
>>>>>>> seems quite extensive), so we might have a very good chance to
>>>>>>> indeed ship it as a drop-in.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Let us know what you find out during testing it :)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> So I tested dracut-ng using the newest version 108. When I
>>>>>> installed
>>>>>> IPFire, it built my raid system, it partitioned the disk, created
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> filesystem, mounted them and installed the system.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Then it failed with the message Unable to install the language
>>>>>> cache.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> So I then built version 100 and it did exactly the same.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Then I thought, maybe I had commented out something in the
>>>>>> rootfile
>>>>>> that was needed so I did a build with all the rootfile lines
>>>>>> uncommented.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It still failed exactly the same.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Any help or suggestions on how I can debug this would be
>>>>>> gratefully
>>>>>> accepted.
>>>>>
>>>>> This happens because the setup utils tries to launch the "chroot"
>>>>> binary and ties to execute the the required command to generate the
>>>>> update cache within the changed root directory.
>>>>>
>>>>> https://git.ipfire.org/?p=ipfire-2.x.git;a=blob;f=src/installer/main.c;h=9b9c630c35fa44ecb372f58cccad64806c198af4;hb=HEAD#l763
>>>>>
>>>>> In our current used version of dracut the "chroot" binary is part
>>>>> of
>>>>> the base and always is present in a generated initramdisk.
>>>>>
>>>>> During development of dracut and dracut-ng the developers decided,
>>>>> that
>>>>> "chroot" does not have to be packed as default into an initramdisk.
>>>>>
>>>>> https://github.com/dracut-ng/dracut-ng/commit/518133714b769160448a51c512d5e152ea6332da
>>>>
>>>> Yes, so I see it was already in the old dracut version 058. If I had
>>>> tried updating from our current version 054 to 058, I would have had
>>>> the same problem.
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> So the chroot binary now manually must be specified to be part of
>>>>> the
>>>>> initramdisk.
>>>>>
>>>>> Something like "dracut --install "/usr/sbin/chroot" <xyz> " should
>>>>> to
>>>>> the trick.
>>>>
>>>> Giving it a try currently in a build.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks very much for your help on this.
>>>
>>> I think the following line in "lfs/cdrom" needs to be extended with the
>>> "--install" from abouve.
>>>
>>> https://git.ipfire.org/?p=ipfire-2.x.git;a=blob;f=lfs/cdrom;h=a25141fc20d82b68a0f10c2a40bfe3831ae1a713;hb=HEAD#l170
>>
>> With your suggestion and a bit of searching that was where I made the 
>> change. However I am also sure that without your suggestion I would still 
>> have been looking for how to fix this for a month of Sundays.
>>
>>
>> My build is nearly finished so I will see if that fixes the install.
>
> Thanks very much Stefan. The built version was able to successfully install 
> a working IPFire and I could restore a previously working version.
>
> Regards,
>
> Adolf.

Hello Adolf,

that sounds pretty cool - I'm happy that I was able to help. Thanks for 
working on this.

Best regards,

-Stefan
>
>
>>
>> One question I have will I also need to apply the same change to the dracut 
>> command in linux-initrd for the image generation?
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Adolf.
>>
>>>
>>> -Stefan
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>>
>>>> Adolf.
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Best regards,
>>>>>
>>>>> -Stefan
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Regards,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Adolf.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Best,
>>>>>>> -Michael
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On 2 Sep 2025, at 13:13, Adolf Belka <adolf.belka@ipfire.org>
>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Hi All,
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I was looking at packages that needed updating. I noticed
>>>>>>>> that
>>>>>>>> dracut was at version 056. The source for that had version
>>>>>>>> 059
>>>>>>>> but that was from Dec 2022 and the last commit in that repo
>>>>>>>> was
>>>>>>>> Mar 2024.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> There is a new repo providing dracut-ng. Their version 100
>>>>>>>> (Apr
>>>>>>>> 2024) is said to be a drop-in replacement for the original
>>>>>>>> dracut. They are now at version 108 and it is being actively
>>>>>>>> maintained.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> With it being said to be a drop-in replacement I thought
>>>>>>>> dracut-
>>>>>>>> ng looked a good candidate to test out but as dracut plays a
>>>>>>>> critical role in the booting process I thought I would ask if
>>>>>>>> anyone has any information to indicate that it is not worth
>>>>>>>> trying it.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Regards,
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Adolf.


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