[plug] reinstall for new core hardware?

[Craig Ringer]

Cameron Patrick wrote:
> | You'll see an extreme case of 'failure to care'. The linux kernel 
> | detects everything anew everytime it boots anyway, so only modules 
> | loaded by userspace matter.
> 
> That 'failure to care' includes, for the most part, it failing to care
> if something goes wrong. :-/

All too true.

> e.g. if the appropriate network driver
> isn't loaded on the new machine, then you'll get error messages spewing
> all over the place without the system seeming to be aware that
> something's gone awry.  Aren't shell scripts wonderful like that? :-P

I'm occasionally tempted to have a go at rewriting the system init 
scripts in Python. I'd be interesting as a learning experience, and the 
error handling would be nice. It'd also be an opportunity to introduce 
parallel loading of independent tasks.

> Hmm, even 'linux single' will (try to) mount partitions from fstab.
> I've normally done it with 'linux init=/bin/sh' but then again, I might
> just be masochistic ;-)

Me too, but I'm reluctant to recommend that to someone who may not be 
familiar with the real basics - mounting /proc, starting devfsd if 
needed, remounting root read/write, etc.

Craig Ringer