[ILUG] Modifying an initrd (ext2 based) as a user

[Darragh Bailey]

On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 12:50:28PM +0100, Rory Browne wrote:
> I'm not sure if putting the correct line in the /etc/fstab with the option
> to allow it to be mounted by a
> normal user would help, but I thought I'd throw it in there.
> 
> Alternatively you may be able to do something with dump/restore, but I've
> never actually used them ( just read about them ), so I don't know.

System needs to be runable by other users on other systems. Needing to
modify the /etc/fstab on each system is likely to cause problems.

dump/restore looks interesting, not sure if they will be able to do
everything. doesn't appear that they can restore special block devices,
but that's hardly surprising.

On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 07:04:24PM +0100, David Golden wrote:
> Modern (not just distro-patched) linux kernels support cpio archives
> as
> an initramfs (which is used similarly to an initrd, but isn't one).
> Perhaps you could use that instead?  You can handle cpio archives as
> an
> ordinary user.  The standard "cpio" command line tool is just strange,
> but alternative interfaces exist.
>
> See "External initramfs images" in
> linux/Documentation/filesystems/ramfs-rootfs-initramfs.txt

I might be able to generate a cpio based initrd as a user, but in order
to be able to modify the original which is a ext2 image file, I need to
be able to read the old style. Rory's suggestion about dump/restore
might deal with this though.


-- 
Darragh

"Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool."