Article 6FYCH generic kernels and supporting Slackware setup/package management tools

generic kernels and supporting Slackware setup/package management tools

by
HQuest
from LinuxQuestions.org on (#6FYCH)
While I welcome the move to a generic from the huge kernels and the flexibility given by initrd, many folks might forget that moving to an initrd supported kernel also requires changes to the lilo.conf file and the need to keep this initrd file updated during new kernel changes. Things I reminded after 30 years on running on automatic mode and had a kernel panic while booting the new generic, since there was no initrd for this kernel in my lilo.conf file. Luckily, I had the huge kernel as my fallback option, so not a big deal to power cycle this VM one more time.

Kudos to Pat for his due diligence with an updated pkgtool Setup script for mkinitrd, and to provide a README file symlinked inside /boot explaining how things work going forward.

liloconfig, however, still fails to account for the initrd requirement. To improve this, I made a quick patch that check if we are using a generic kernel, and if so, updates the initrd file using Pat's mkinitrd script from pkgtool. Might become a duplicate effort if selected from the Setup option together with liloconfig, but better run it twice than none.

Kudos to the slackpkg tool maintainers for adding a reminder about regenerating a the initrd whenever a new kernel is installed/upgraded, however it does falsely remind even if there is no initrd configured on the lilo.conf file. Perhaps it only checks for the word "initrd", that happens to be present as a comment for the "compat" option, and not at the Linux bootable partition config section.

Thank you for all you do for the community.
Attached Files
txt.gifliloconfig-mkinitrd.patch.txt (1.9 KB)
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