[TUHS] Unix install & "standalone" package

[Warner Losh]

On Mon, Sep 4, 2023 at 8:56 AM Vincenzo Nicosia <katolaz at freaknet.org>
wrote:

> rather, back then you didn't need the same kernel to run on a wide
> variety of hardware, with all the possible different combinations of
> peripherals, requiring all sorts of different drivers.
>
> I think that's the only real reason why initramfs came to existence:
> allowing a selection of kernel modules to be loaded at init time,
> depending on the hardware at disposal on that machine. Then things went
> south, and more recent initramfs have everything and the kitchen sink.
> But that's another story.


Yea, it was an effort to move mounting of root out of the kernel. The
earliest
scripts just mounted the right disk and moved on, and didn't load any new
drivers: they just had the logic to pick the desired root. But at the same
time,
there were a lot of people that were running on 4MB and 8MB  systems that
noticed they could put all the router software in the initramfs and never
pivot
to something else and they could have quite the product with that. And those
were the first few bricks that paved the road to hell :)

Warner
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