[Slackbuilds-users] Edit suggested of intel-microcode.SlackBuild

[Didier Spaier]

Hi,

Le 06/09/2023 à 15:13, Andrzej Telszewski a écrit :
> On 06/09/2023 14:29, fourtysixandtwo wrote:
>> I second Didier's suggestion.
>>
>> Here's  a snippet from the grub docs, the default images it looks for are at
>> the bottom:
>>
>> 'GRUB_EARLY_INITRD_LINUX_CUSTOM'
>> 'GRUB_EARLY_INITRD_LINUX_STOCK'
>>      List of space-separated early initrd images to be loaded from
>>      '/boot'.  This is for loading things like CPU microcode, firmware,
>>      ACPI tables, crypto keys, and so on.  These early images will be
>>      loaded in the order declared, and all will be loaded before the
>>      actual functional initrd image.
>>
>>      'GRUB_EARLY_INITRD_LINUX_STOCK' is for your distribution to declare
>>      images that are provided by the distribution.  It should not be
>>      modified without understanding the consequences.  They will be
>>      loaded first.
>>
>>      'GRUB_EARLY_INITRD_LINUX_CUSTOM' is for your custom created images.
>>
>>      The default stock images are as follows, though they may be
>>      overridden by your distribution:
>>           intel-uc.img intel-ucode.img amd-uc.img amd-ucode.img
>> early_ucode.cpio microcode.cpio
>>
>> Cheers
> 
> Still, I'm not that fast about changing the name.
> This name is _kinda_ standard in Slackware for quite some time
> and is used by default in _/etc/mkinitrd.conf_

Well, this is just an example in a sample file and in the man page, easy to
change if Patrick agrees.

And nothing prevents a user to type mkinitrd -P /any/path/to/the/early/initrd

On the other hand one can propose a patch to append " intel-ucode.cpio" to
GRUB_EARLY_INITRD_LINUX_STOCK but good luck to have it accepted in grub-2.12 by
Daniel Kiper and if not you'd have to wait two more years or so to get it in
the next grub stable version. Bear in mind that as Patrick have announced grub
will be the default boot manager in Slackware 15.1, so I assule that will be
grub 2.12.

Further, we need to also be able to provide an early initrd for AMD CPUs as I
have posted at the end of this post on LQ:
https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/requests-for-current-next-15-0-15-1-a-4175706801/#post6450660

Also after some thought I think it is better to use the boot manager to load the
early initrds than the application that builds the main initrd, like mkinitrd or
dracut or mkinitcpio, for two reasons:
1. Some Slackware users will want to continue using a kernel (maybe custom)
without an initrd.
2. Whenever a new microcode is provided (either associated with a new
kernel-firmware for an AMD CPU, or as a new intel-microcode package), to include
it in the main initrd one need to rebuild it. instead you have nothing to do if
the early initrd(s) is (are) referenced in the config file of another boot
manager (systemd-boot, rEFInd, syslinux, LiLo, Limine, whatever) as the path to
the early initrd will not change, but the file(s) itself or themselves will be
the new one(s).

Cheers,
Didier

> Any suggestions?
> Maybe a copy or configurable name of the output file in the SlackBuild?
> 
> Symlinking is out of scope, since the boot partition will often be FAT32, that
> does not support symlinks.
> 
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