• Thayne Harbaugh's avatar
    [PATCH] initramfs: unprivileged image creation · a363b379
    Thayne Harbaugh authored
    This patch makes several tweaks so that an initramfs image can be
    completely created by an unprivileged user.  It should maintain
    compatibility with previous initramfs early userspace cpio/image creation
    and it updates documentation.
    
    There are a few very important tweaks:
    
    CONFIG_INITRAMFS_SOURCE is now either a single cpio archive that is
    directly used or a list of directories and files for building a cpio
    archive for the initramfs image.  Making the cpio archive listable in
    CONFIG_INITRAMFS_SOURCE makes the cpio step more official and automated so
    that it doesn't have to be copied by hand to usr/initramfs_data.cpio (I
    think this was broken anyway and would be overwritten).  The alternative
    list of directories *and* files means that files can be install in a "root"
    directory and device-special files can be listed in a file list.
    
    CONFIG_ROOT_UID and CONFIG_ROOT_GID are now available for doing simple
    user/group ID translation.  That means that user ID 500, group ID 500 can
    create all the files in the "root" directory, but that they can all be
    owned by user ID 0, group ID 0 in the cpio image.
    
    Various documentation updates to pull it all together.
    
    Removal of old cruft that was unused/misleading.
    Signed-off-by: default avatarAndrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarLinus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
    a363b379
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