[bug#43219] Fwd: [PATCH] gnu: Handle nfs-root device strings.

[Stefan]

Hi Danny!

> That sounds like a good idea.

I'm glad to hear this. :-)

> First, I like to apologize for the huge delay in handling this stuff.

Nevermind.

> My
> original intent was to let Brice Waegeneire <brice@waegenei.re>, my GSoC 
> intern
> for network booting, handle your request--both because he needs it anyway and
> because he presumably has more knowledge on network booting.  He's missing in
> action (no communication at all) and I gave up having Brice do it.
> In any case, his GSoC is over.

That’s a pity.

> I will now look at your request on my own.  I obtained some Raspberry Pis, a
> NAS with TFTP server support out of the box and I made sure I could manipulate
> the DHCP server I use on my network, so the next step is to try to actually
> use your patchset myself--which I didn't do before (sorry).
> 
> I want to note that patches with system tests are processed *much* faster--I
> don't think many reviewers would go to those lengths I did (obtaining special
> hardware) in order to test contributions--so usually, it would have been
> basically stuck forever without system tests.

Oh, I would never have expected that. I tried to do a system test, but for 
aarch64 substitutes where missing (I think basically qemu) and building locally 
on my small system took days and failed in the end, so I gave up. But please 
take a look here, it may help: 
<https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=41820#17>

> Thanks for persevering on this feature.

Sure, its in my own interest. :-)

>> However, that <nfs-share> record would brake with the compatibility of how an
>> NFS mount is defined today, and it makes the code much more complex without
>> having a real gain.
> 
> The real gain would be this:
> 
> There are a lot of options that one could need (see
> https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/filesystems/nfs/nfsroot.txt .

> I'm just saying that it will become a record over time anyway.  But maybe
> it will be something more general for PXE--hard to tell which is better at
> this point in time.   So nevermind for now.

I know about them and used them before. I agree, a bigger record makes sense. 
But please consider that these options actually disable the use of an initrd, 
which brings more complications, as guix currently relies on having an initrd.

> However, I cannot see a patch as attachment to your E-Mail.

Oh, that was just my initial e-mail generating this ticket yesterday: 
<https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=43219#5>


Bye

Stefan