[Libguestfs] Support for gzipped kernel mods

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 09:54:15AM -0700, Thomas S Hatch wrote:
> After my wonderful experience with febootstrap and and gzipped kernel
> modules I just wanted to post a little information about it.
> 
> febootstrap uses insmod, it seems because insmod is required for building
> the initrd, while modprobe can read in gzipped kernel modules, insmod
> cannot. This means that there are two solutions to the problem, one would be
> to make febootstrap copy all of the modules to another location and gunzip
> them if they are zipped, then load the modules from the other location.
> Another solution would be to patch insmod to support gzipped kernel mods,
> and then the changes to febootstrap would be quite menial, and insmod would
> be more in line with current kernel capabilities.
> 
> For now I have solved the problem with this script for the Arch Linux
> package, and while this is VERY dirty, it gets libguestfs running now on
> Arch:
> https://github.com/thatch45/archpkgs/blob/master/libguestfs/libguestfs.install
> 
> So I am wondering what everyone thinks the best approach would be here, so
> that I can start down a more viable path for getting this fixed.

I'm sure the Arch boot initrd/initramfs must have already solved this.

Could you take a look inside one, eg:

  zcat /boot/initrd-XXX.img | cpio -itv  # view files

  zcat /boot/initrd-XXX.img | cpio -id   # unpack it

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
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