Re: dracut-ng

[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.

> 
> 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.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>