Re: multiboot2 and module2 boot issues via GRUB2

[Roman Shaposhnik <roman@zededa.com>]

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On Tue, Apr 6, 2021 at 10:51 AM Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@citrix.com>
wrote:

> On 06/04/2021 09:19, Jan Beulich wrote:
> > On 01.04.2021 21:43, Andrew Cooper wrote:
> >> On 01/04/2021 09:44, Roger Pau Monné wrote:
> >>> On Thu, Apr 01, 2021 at 09:31:07AM +0200, Jan Beulich wrote:
> >>>> On 01.04.2021 03:06, Roman Shaposhnik wrote:
> >>>>> And the obvious next question: is my EVE usecase esoteric enough that
> >>>>> I should just go ahead and do a custom GRUB patch or is there a more
> >>>>> general interest in this?
> >>>> Not sure if it ought to be a grub patch - the issue could as well
> >>>> be dealt with in Xen, by concatenating modules to form a monolithic
> >>>> initrd.
> >>> I would rather have it done in the loader than Xen, mostly because
> >>> it's a Linux boot specific format, and hence I don't think Xen should
> >>> have any knowledge about it.
> >>>
> >>> If it turns out to be impossible to implement on the loader side we
> >>> should consider doing it in Xen, but that's not my first option.
> >> Concatenating random things which may or may not be initrds is
> >> absolutely not something Xen should do.  We don't have enough context to
> >> do it safely/sensibly.
> > Well, I wasn't suggesting anywhere to concatenate random things.
> > Instead I was envisioning a command line option giving us the
> > context we need (e.g. "initrd=3+5").
>
> That's a massive layering violation, and incredibly fragile to the order
> of lines in the boot stanza.
>

Don't have enough karma to argue Xen architectural side of things, but...


> Either fix it by using a single monolithic initrd, which has worked
> perfectly well for the past 2 decades
>

...just to point out the obvious here:  even Debian who can HARDLY be
blamed for tracking the bleeding edge has been recommending this
for quite some time:

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/NetbootFirmware#The_Solution:_Add_Firmware_to_Initramfs
Obviously there's no way to do that with Xen today out of the box.

Now, you can turn around and say "well, how hard could it be to
concatenate?". That's fair. But it is also fair to point out that everytime
we do that we portray Xen as "not quite as user friendly as X" (and
this is, of course, pure perception -- but if we want users to stick
perception matters a lot).

Thanks,
Roman.

P.S. Curiously enough, saying that -- I'm undermining my own case -- it is
actually
*easier* for me to hack GRUB in EVE. But I felt like stating the obvious
anyway.

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