Re: Menuconfig and CRAMFS

[Robert P. J. D. <rp...@mi...>]

On Sun, 26 Aug 2007, Kristoffer Ericson wrote:

> On Sun, 26 Aug 2007 03:03:25 -0400 (EDT)
> "Robert P. J. Day" <rp...@mi...> wrote:
>
> > > > On Sat, 25 Aug 2007, Kristoffer Ericson wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Greetings,
> > > > >
> > > > > Using menuconfig the option cramfs doesn't show up in pseudo
> > > > > filesystems, this is because there's no text after 'bool'. A
> > > > > simple 'bool cramfs-support' would do the trick. Since its
> > > > > default y, there's currently no way to deselect it, so bug
> > > > > or intentional?
> >
> > we just had a brief but animated thread about this over at LKML,
> > where i submitted a patch to make RAMFS selectable, and that
> > turned out very badly (for me, that is :-).  AFAICT, you *need*
> > RAMFS for building a kernel, so you can't choose to leave it out.
> >
> > if that's truly the case, i can at least send in a patch to remove
> > the misleading help text for that Kconfig entry which suggests it
> > can be selected as a module.
>
> lol, yeah really misleading text. Big thanks for clearing this up
> Robert.

actually, i'm not sure i cleared it up so much as i confused myself
even further.  i'm going to post about this on the kernel newbies list
shortly but, in a nutshell, *shouldn't* RAMFS be a selectable option?

according to al viro, you absolutely need RAMFS to build a kernel, and
he's not sure why it's even an option, even a forced one.  but, after
some cursory perusal, it seems like there's a messy linkage between
initrd and initramfs and ramfs, to the point where i'm not really sure
what should and what shouldn't be user selectable.

shouldn't i be allowed to build a kernel without initrd support?  or
ramfs support?  or neither?  i just started reading up on this, so i'm
still unsure.

rday
-- 
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Robert P. J. Day
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry
Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

http://crashcourse.ca
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