[syslinux] [PATCH] 4 Patches for initrd+= and initrdfile= Options

[H. Peter Anvin]

On 10/27/2012 01:46 AM, Ferenc Wagner wrote:
> Shao Miller <sha0.miller at gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> On 10/26/2012 04:37, Ferenc Wagner wrote:
>>
>>> "Shao Miller" <sha0.miller at gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> 1. The "initrdfile=" option allows you to specify the target path
>>>> for the file that will be encapsulated, using the '@'
>>>> symbol. Please see commit messages, way down below. 
>>>
>>> Hi Shao, This is way cool! How do you feel about adding support for
>>> recursing into directories? 
>>
>> Are you asking about loading an entire directory from the Syslinux
>> boot media and passing that directory and its files into Linux' rootfs
>> via the initramfs scheme?  If so, while it could be coded, it wouldn't
>> work for filesystems that cannot list directory contents, such as
>> PXELINUX' TFTP "filesystem."  Is that what you meant?
> 
> Yes, that's what I meant, and I now understand that it wouldn't work
> over TFTP.  On the other hand, Gert's idea of reading the file list from
> another file is only marginally better than the already available cpio
> concatenation, as the file list should be generated anyway...  So I'm
> not so sure either is worth the effort, considering the resulting
> feature disparity.
> 

Well, keep in mind that we actually *can* do this over http with the
lwip code, so it probably is worthwhile.  It isn't a great idea for
network booting due to latency, but for disk it might be really useful.

	-hpa