Re: dracut-ng

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

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

-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.
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > 
> > > 
> > 
>