[Bryn M. Reeves]

On 01/29/2013 03:45 PM, Simo Sorce wrote:
> I guess it was in the short while I switched to Ubuntu, because from my
> memory I used to change hardware on my machines and always be extremely
> happy at how Linux was resilient to hardware changes between boots and
> automatically detected new hardware without the dreaded rescue mode.

I believe mkinitrd behaved this way before there was an Ubuntu so I'd be 
surprised (at least RHL7/8/9, probably earlier: I was just a user until 
RHL7 days).

The thing is that stuff in the initramfs only matters if you need it for 
booting.

Added a new sound card? Great! We'll get to it when we have a root fs. 
New network card? Well, as long as you're not trying to boot an iSCSI 
volume over it that shouldn't be a problem either etc.

> Yes but is /boot space still an issue these days ?

Hard to say; it isn't for me but that's because I always make them large 
enough for my expected uses.

> Do we still need a separate /boot at all ?

Yes afaik. There are still some device types that are problematic 
without it (do the boot loaders support native LUKS/dmcrypt now?).

> Disks are huge these days.
> And speed is still an issue with modern SSDs ?

I don't have any so I can't tell you but it should be easy enough to 
test. I wouldn't expect a massive improvement though.

> This are the 2 cases I have in mind:
> 1. Machine breaks -> change motherboard -> boot breaks

This should not break your boot unless the storage adapters are wildly 
different (most things just use AHCI and are happy now).

> 2. Swap disk to other laptop -> boot breaks

Again, unless you have very different storage controllers this will not 
break.

I really don't want or need every FC HBA kernel module, firmware bin 
file or other junk in my laptop initramfs "just in case" I happen to 
swap the disk to a laptop with built-in fibre-channel :-).

If I was moving a disk to such radically different hardware I'd be able 
to prep it in advance (and I think that's 'advanced' enough that it's 
reasonable to expect a little user knowledge).

Regards,
Bryn.