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Remove dummy kernel files

Open talex5 opened this issue 5 years ago • 8 comments

The mirage-firewall distribution includes dummy modules.img and initramfs files. These were needed on Qubes 3 for it to accept something as a kernel.

On Qubes 4 (according to https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/managing-vm-kernel/):

All the files besides vmlinuz are optional.

We should remove these dummy files from the build and installation instructions.

talex5 avatar Jun 12 '19 16:06 talex5

As of today on Qubes R4.0 with all updates dom0 still requires the dummy initramfs to start a mirage qube, but modules.img is not required.

marmot1791 avatar Dec 14 '19 00:12 marmot1791

Opened question of whether this is a bug or a docs issue over at qubes-issues: https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/5516

marmot1791 avatar Dec 14 '19 00:12 marmot1791

This is partially blocked until Qubes R4.1. Until that is released initramfs is still required.

marmot1791 avatar Dec 15 '19 15:12 marmot1791

Since Qubes 4.0 is end of life now, IMHO it would be good to remove the initramfs file. This also means that our packaging and install instructions can be much simpler (we'll only distribute a single binary, and no need for tar).

Does this make sense @palainp?

hannesm avatar Nov 13 '22 14:11 hannesm

This should be right according to the documentation, but I was unable to boot without it some times algo :/

palainp avatar Nov 13 '22 15:11 palainp

This is still the case, I have the following:

$ qvm-start mirage-fw
Missing file: /var/lib/qubes/vm-kernels/mirage-fw/initramfs

palainp avatar Nov 13 '22 15:11 palainp

The existence of initramfs is checked in https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-core-admin/blob/c177aacbe1afc35034826ef538c0e49ed40b6bc7/qubes/storage/kernels.py#L140 See: https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/5516

palainp avatar Nov 13 '22 16:11 palainp

Thanks @palainp for your investigations :)

hannesm avatar Nov 13 '22 23:11 hannesm