Auto detection of Debian's initrd: the backup file initrd.img-*.old-dkms is used instead of the normal initrd.img-*

[Hong]

I found this problem: if I let rEFInd auto detect the initrd file, it auto uses the initrd.img-*.old-dkms instead of the "normal" one. e.g. on my system, the file initrd.img-3.16.0-4-amd64 is not used, instead, the back up file generated by dkms initrd.img-3.16.0-4-amd64.old-dkms is used. Removing the backup file would make things back to normal.

I have fixed this for myself by add a menu entry to specify the kernel options I want to use, but I would consider this a bug as this dkms backup file is often there on Debian...

[Roderick W. Smith]

Thanks for the report. I'll look into this, but the problem is that rEFInd's code to associate initrd files to kernels is pretty complex as it is. rEFInd takes advantage of a common pattern to Linux kernel/initrd naming -- that is, giving them both version numbers that match. The problem is that this pattern is not universal (Arch doesn't give its kernels or initrd files version numbers, and often installs two initrds for its kernel, for instance). If a distribution violates the post hoc standard naming conventions upon which rEFInd relies, I must either include distribution-specific code in rEFInd to cover what that specific distribution does or let it slide and rely on users to create custom stanzas, rename kernels, or use some other workaround. I have included distribution-specific code for some other things, but it's getting convoluted enough that I'm concerned about introducing new bugs that might affect everybody in order to support one distribution's unusual file-naming conventions. In a worst-case scenario, creating manual boot stanzas puts you no worse off with rEFInd than you'd be with any other boot loader that relies on similar configuration, such as ELILO, GRUB Legacy, or gummiboot.