Someone here recently talked about chroot'ing to a loop-mounted initrd
and running the setup therein. Has anyone done this? Is anything other
than having /proc mounted in the chroot necessary for this?
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In alt.os.linux.slackware, /dev/rob0 dared to utter,
> Someone here recently talked about chroot'ing to a loop-mounted initrd
> and running the setup therein. Has anyone done this? Is anything other
> than having /proc mounted in the chroot necessary for this?

Gentoo's install does something similar. As I recall, the instructions
are:
mount proc -o bind
cat /etc/resolv.conf > newresolv.conf
chroot /bin/bash /newdir
source /etc/profile

I can't imagine much more else that would be needed.

- --
It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise,
Than for a man to hear the song of fools.
Ecclesiastes 7:5
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pgp trash troll delete

Alan Hicks <alan@lizella.network> wrote:
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> In alt.os.linux.slackware, /dev/rob0 dared to utter,
> > Someone here recently talked about chroot'ing to a loop-mounted initrd
> > and running the setup therein. Has anyone done this? Is anything other
> > than having /proc mounted in the chroot necessary for this?

> Gentoo's install does something similar. As I recall, the instructions
> are:
> mount proc -o bind
> cat /etc/resolv.conf > newresolv.conf
> chroot /bin/bash /newdir
> source /etc/profile

> I can't imagine much more else that would be needed.

> - --
> It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise,
> Than for a man to hear the song of fools.
> Ecclesiastes 7:5
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> iD8DBQFA3HTGlKR45I6cfKARAjuQAJ0TgLkxEWVgXNPUumeR9d S24mC9cgCfXve3
> k/2Av/DTlUg8ZGq2xTpmaIU=
> =25ei
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 17:06:25 -0500, /dev/rob0 wrote:

> Someone here recently talked about chroot'ing to a loop-mounted initrd
> and running the setup therein. Has anyone done this? Is anything other
> than having /proc mounted in the chroot necessary for this?

Yes, and not much. Assuming this:

mount /mnt/cdrom
gzip -cd /mnt/cdrom/isolinux/initrd.img >/boot/setup.img
mkdir /boot/install
# And maybe: "umount -a" (or some such).
mount -t ext2 -o loop /boot/setup.img /boot/install

Something like this:

mount --bind /proc /boot/install/proc
chroot /boot/install /bin/bash sh --login

# Here you might want to edit and exec: /etc/rc.d/rc.S
# In which case following command might not be needed/wanted
../linuxrc

HTH, and have fun.

--
-Menno.

On Sat, 26 Jun 2004 12:59:14 +0000, Menno Duursma wrote:
> mount --bind /proc /boot/install/proc

THIS was what I missed. I tried mounting inside the chroot.

> chroot /boot/install /bin/bash sh --login

Aha! But there's still a lot of cruft in the environment. I did
unset PATH ; . /etc/profile
to at least get the $PATH right. I found that you can't just cd to your
directory and "chroot ." I did "chroot . /bin/sh".

> # Here you might want to edit and exec: /etc/rc.d/rc.S
> # In which case following command might not be needed/wanted
> ./linuxrc

Since you're not running the /sbin/init in the chroot this would have
no effect.

> HTH, and have fun.

Ha, well, it might have! Last night I decided to quit messing with
it and just get it done; I set up the initrd.img and 10.0 bare.i in
LILO and just ran a more typical setup. Choosing the "install from
pre-mounted directory" source option, I found a small bug in the
installer. I try to conserve keystrokes so I gave my directory a
single-letter name, which unfortunately was the same as one of the
series directory (it was "x".)

I got into the setup to the selection of series to install and the mode
of installation (these days I'm lazy; I always choose "full".) When it
started installing packages, it installed "x" first, followed by "x",
and again by "x" until I hit Ctrl-C. I am guessing that the first path
element being the same as that series directory is what confused it.

So I had to try again before I could get a clean 10 installed. And bit
by bit I copied over all my junk such that it's no longer a clean
install.

My custom 2.6.6 kernel had trouble, but not really, just that I chose
not to enable hotplug. I'm ashamed to admit I was depending on that!

Another thing, and this IS a real bug, is that udev overrides the
/dev/mouse symlink as is set by mouseconfig, if you don't happen to be
using /dev/psaux for the mouse.
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On Sat, 26 Jun 2004 19:54:08 -0500, /dev/rob0 wrote:
> On Sat, 26 Jun 2004 12:59:14 +0000, Menno Duursma wrote:
>> mount --bind /proc /boot/install/proc
>
> THIS was what I missed. I tried mounting inside the chroot.
>
>> chroot /boot/install /bin/bash sh --login
>
> Aha! But there's still a lot of cruft in the environment. I did
> unset PATH ;

No need for this, however if you where to want that done, in my example
execute it before the "chroot" instead.

> . /etc/profile

That is what the "--login" option does ...

> to at least get the $PATH right.

Again, no need.

> I found that you can't just cd to your directory and "chroot ."

Normally, on Linux, you can. Not for this though. Read no.

> I did "chroot . /bin/sh".

That isn't going to work, becouse BusyBox expects to be told how it
should act, as an argument - hence:

chroot /some/path /bin/bash sh --login

Might as well have been:

cd /some/path
chroot . /bin/busybox sh --login

>> # Here you might want to edit and exec: /etc/rc.d/rc.S
>> # In which case following command might not be needed/wanted
>> ./linuxrc
>
> Since you're not running the /sbin/init in the chroot this would have
> no effect.

Well, just try it out then ...

(FWIW: there are some symlinks being overwritten by rc.S which is
called from init. And that's probably realy needed, and stuff, idunno.)

>> HTH, and have fun.
>
> Ha, well, it might have!

Now you'll know how to go about this, should there ever be a next time ...

[ ... Install problems, you might want to report to Patrick . ]

> My custom 2.6.6 kernel had trouble, but not really, just that I chose
> not to enable hotplug. I'm ashamed to admit I was depending on that!

<AOL>
Yeah, me too, i'll just:
let hotplug figure it out
awk lsmod output into rc.modules
and disable it :-).
</AOL>

> Another thing, and this IS a real bug, is that udev overrides the
> /dev/mouse symlink as is set by mouseconfig, if you don't happen to be
> using /dev/psaux for the mouse.

Hey, thanks! ATM i'm using 2.4.x on this very machine still. But it does
have a (3-button Logitech) serial mouse installed. And i _was_ planning on
switching to 2.6.x now that i upgraded to the great Slackware 10 !

Cheers

--
-Menno.

On Sun, 27 Jun 2004 09:06:34 +0000, Menno Duursma wrote:
>>> # Here you might want to edit and exec: /etc/rc.d/rc.S # In which case
>>> following command might not be needed/wanted ./linuxrc
>>
>> Since you're not running the /sbin/init in the chroot this would have no
>> effect.
>
> Well, just try it out then ...
>
> (FWIW: there are some symlinks being overwritten by rc.S which is called
> from init. And that's probably realy needed, and stuff, idunno.)

That's just it: nothing is calling the rc.S or other init scripts in
the chroot.

>>> HTH, and have fun.
>>
>> Ha, well, it might have!
>
> Now you'll know how to go about this, should there ever be a next time ...

Oh there certainly will be. I'm going to try to upgrade /dev/wife to
10.0, and she cannot tolerate any down time.

> [ ... Install problems, you might want to report to Patrick . ]

Did it before I posted.

>> Another thing, and this IS a real bug, is that udev overrides the
>> /dev/mouse symlink as is set by mouseconfig, if you don't happen to be
>> using /dev/psaux for the mouse.
>
> Hey, thanks! ATM i'm using 2.4.x on this very machine still. But it does
> have a (3-button Logitech) serial mouse installed. And i _was_ planning on
> switching to 2.6.x now that i upgraded to the great Slackware 10 !

I plan to change /dev/mouse in my rc.gpm and xorg.conf to point to
/dev/ttyS0. That will work for now. But perhaps this bug is already
fixed in the new -current tree?

Thanks for your reply, and you too, Alan.
--
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On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 17:06:25 -0500, /dev/rob0 wrote:

> Someone here recently talked about chroot'ing to a loop-mounted initrd
> and running the setup therein. Has anyone done this? Is anything other
> than having /proc mounted in the chroot necessary for this?

Well, that would be me. Mark Hill gave a different suggestion so I decided
to try that. I'll give a quick summary.

From my running Slack 9.1 installation, I downloaded the Slack 10 series
that I wanted.
I mounted the target directory for Slackware 10 on /slack10.
I cd'ed into the series 'a' directory and ran
installpkg -root /slack10 *.tgz
The same for series ap l n x xap, after moving some packages that I didn't
want to install.

Then I tried to chroot into the new Slack10 root, but chroot said
something about /bin/bash was not a file. A bit of investigating found
that a bunch of sym links were missing in /slack10/lib. I'm guessing that
on a normal install these would be made by ldconfig during the first
bootup. Anyway, the doinst.sh in the glibc-solibs package has a bunch of
lines which build these links, which didn't get run during my installpkg.
I didn't manage to understand the script well enough to know why. I
copied only the link building lines to a file in /slack10/lib and ran
that. Now with these links in place, I could do

chroot /slack10 /bin/bash -i
mount -t proc /proc /proc

Then using pkgtool I ran the various setup scripts. The only unusual
think here was that the netconfig script did not probe for my network
card. Maybe because I had hotplug enabled? Anyway I added a rc.netdevice
for my old ISA nic.

Then I made a /etc/fstab modelled after the fstab in my Slack 9.1 install.
I exited the chroot, edited lilo.conf in slack 9.1 to add a section for
the new kernel and new partition, and ran lilo.

Rebooted, chose slack10, and it came up running fine.

Hmm, I wonder how I could move my normal users over with their same
passwords.

Mike

On Mon, 28 Jun 2004 13:28:59 -0400, Mike Denhoff wrote:
> Then using pkgtool I ran the various setup scripts. The only unusual
> think here was that the netconfig script did not probe for my network
> card. Maybe because I had hotplug enabled?

Probably without /proc the probing does not work. I haven't delved into
the code to know for sure, but that would be my guess.

> Anyway I added a rc.netdevice for my old ISA nic.

Probing often didn't work for ISA NIC's anyway.

> Hmm, I wonder how I could move my normal users over with their same
> passwords.

Copy from the old /etc the files group, passwd, and *shadow. However
you should merge some of the new groups added in 10.0.
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On Mon, 28 Jun 2004 13:57:30 -0500, /dev/rob0 wrote:

> On Mon, 28 Jun 2004 13:28:59 -0400, Mike Denhoff wrote:
>> Then using pkgtool I ran the various setup scripts. The only unusual
>> think here was that the netconfig script did not probe for my network
>> card. Maybe because I had hotplug enabled?
>
> Probably without /proc the probing does not work. I haven't delved into
> the code to know for sure, but that would be my guess.
>
Okay, you made me look. netconfig contains

# Check for existing network driver:
unset DONOTPROBE
if cat /proc/net/dev | grep eth0 1> /dev/null 2> /dev/null ; then
DONOTPROBE=true
fi

After I chroot'ed from the running Slack 9.1 into the new Slack 10, I did
mount /proc. I guess netconfig found the eth0 in Slack 9.1 and did not
do the probe.

>> Hmm, I wonder how I could move my normal users over with their same
>> passwords.
>
> Copy from the old /etc the files group, passwd, and *shadow. However
> you should merge some of the new groups added in 10.0.

Thanks,
Mike