Path: csiph.com!pasdenom.info!newsfeed.bofh.team!news.nntp4.net!news.hispagatos.org!srl.newsdeef.eu!news.corradoroberto.it!gothmog.csi.it!bofh.it!news.nic.it!robomod From: Volodymyr Mutel Newsgroups: linux.debian.kernel Subject: initramfs-tools: support for root FS on a FAT32 loop image Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2026 09:00:01 +0100 Message-ID: X-Mailbox-Line: From debian-kernel-request@lists.debian.org Sat Jan 31 07:57:04 2026 Old-Return-Path: X-Amavis-Spam-Status: No, score=-6.998 tagged_above=-10000 required=5.3 tests=[BAYES_00=-2, LDO_WHITELIST=-5, RCVD_IN_VALIDITY_CERTIFIED_BLOCKED=0.001, RCVD_IN_VALIDITY_RPBL_BLOCKED=0.001] autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no X-Policyd-Weight: using cached result; rate: -4.6 X-Greylist: delayed 363 seconds by postgrey-1.36 at bendel; Sat, 31 Jan 2026 07:56:48 UTC User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:128.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/128.0 SeaMonkey/2.53.23 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=KOI8-U; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailing-List: archive/latest/153432 List-ID: List-URL: List-Archive: https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/fa033701-059a-db1b-b728-e69cfe780703@mwg.dp.ua Approved: robomod@news.nic.it Lines: 21 Organization: linux.* mail to news gateway Sender: robomod@news.nic.it X-Original-Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2026 09:49:37 +0200 X-Original-Message-ID: Xref: csiph.com linux.debian.kernel:91013 Dear Everyone, Looking into https://git.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu/+source/initramfs-tools/tree/scripts/local?h=ubuntu/noble , we can see logic added by Ubuntu in lines 220..268 for handling loop= option in the kernel cmdline, in which case root= specifies the filesystem containing the loop image, and loop=path/rootfs.loop specifies the path of an image file to be mounted with -o loop as a root filesystem. Corresponding logic we see also in https://git.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu/+source/initramfs-tools/tree/init?h=ubuntu/noble where global variables are filled from cmdline in lines 134..145. This logic greatly simplifies the creation of a bootable Linux instance as a set of additional files and folders coexisting with other data on a removable FAT32 volume (like a USB storage drive), not requiring and kind of data removal or storage reformatting. Looking into https://salsa.debian.org/kernel-team/initramfs-tools/-/blob/v0.148.3/scripts/local and https://salsa.debian.org/kernel-team/initramfs-tools/-/blob/v0.148.3/init , I don't see any equivalent logic in Debian Trixie version, despite it having bigger version number than that of Ubuntu Noble (0.142). Can anyone please propose, how the same logic could be implemented within Debian Trixie and its initramfs-tools ? Probably there could be some kind of drop-in script for top or premount stage ? I would greatly appreciate any samples of such script[s] from you for my adoption and customization. Thanks in advance for your help.