suse-9.3 initrd wonkyness

[Net Llama!]

On Fri, 10 Feb 2006, Bruce Marshall wrote:
> On Friday 10 February 2006 15:45, Net Llama! wrote:
> > I've been fighting with this bizarro problem for the past 3 days, and I'm
> > about at my wit's end, so hopefully one of you suse experts can help.
> >
> > I'm trying to create a suse auto-install CD that will use autoyast to
> > install the packages from a separate box on the network.  I've got suse
> > 9.3-x86, 10.0-x86, and 10.0-x86_64 all working perfectly.
> >
> > For reasons which remain a mystery, 9.3-x86_64 seems to have this perverse
> > requirement that both a 32 & 64bit initrd be included on the CD or I end
> > up with a br0k3n installation, or the installer kernel panics cause it
> > can't find init.
> >
> > Now, maybe both initrds aren't a requirement, but everything i'm reading
> > seems to suggest that they are.  At this point, i don't even care why it
> > needs both, when 10.0 doesn't, i'd just like to understand where they are
> > called/named so that I rename them to something other than 'initrd' and
> > 'initrd64'.  Anyone know?
>
> A quick check of the install dvd shows that there is an initrd  or
> initrd-xxxxxxx  in every kernel rpm.
>
> When they select a kernel for the system being installed, they would pick the
> right rpm to get that kernel and with it comes the initrd.
>
> For example, in:
>
> kernel-smp-2.6.13-15.i586.rpm
>
> there are the following:
>
> /boot/initrd
> /boot/initrd-2.6.13-15-smp
> /boot/initrd.previous
>
> where the first and last above end up being symlinks to the one in the middle.
>
> There is always a symlink to the initrd-xxx being used so it doesn't matter
> what you call them as long as the symlink gets done.
>
> (or at least that's the way I see it)
>
> And I'm sure they probably run a mkinitrd during the install to pick up the
> modules that they *really* need to have in initrd from the list
> in /etc/sysconfig/kernel

Thanks Bruce.  Unfortunately, that is for post-install.  I'm running into
a problem just getting the installation started.  The isolinux.cfg in the
initrd only references the 32 bit 'linux' kernel.  I can't figure out
where the 64 bit linux64 and initrd64 files come into the picture, yet
they are definitely needed.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lonni J Friedman                        netllama at linux-sxs.org
LlamaLand				http://netllama.linux-sxs.org