From owner-freebsd-current Wed Feb 21 11:35:16 1996 Return-Path: owner-current Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id LAA22264 for current-outgoing; Wed, 21 Feb 1996 11:35:16 -0800 (PST) Received: from austin.polstra.com (austin.polstra.com [206.213.73.10]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id LAA22254 for ; Wed, 21 Feb 1996 11:35:08 -0800 (PST) Received: from austin.polstra.com (jdp@localhost) by austin.polstra.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id LAA03576 for ; Wed, 21 Feb 1996 11:35:07 -0800 Message-Id: <199602211935.LAA03576@austin.polstra.com> To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: chrooting /sbin/init - has anybody tried it? Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 11:35:07 -0800 From: John Polstra Sender: owner-current@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk I have a chroot environment set up on my production system, so that I can do make worlds of -current, without touching my installed system. (Thanks, Nate!) I've been toying with the idea of taking this one step further. I'd like to use chroot to enable me to boot up and run the -current kernel at times, for testing, without creating a separate slice for its root filesystem. My chroot tree is in "/home/current". What I have in mind is the following: * Modify the -current kernel slighly, so that it looks for the "init" program in "/home/current/sbin/init". * Build the modified kernel, and put a copy of it in "/kernel.current". * Modify the -current "init" program so that, at startup, it does a chroot to "/home/current". If I did that, I think I could then boot up "/kernel.current", and everything after that would run chrooted, in my "/home/current" tree. It should behave almost like an actual installed -current system. Have any of you tried this before? Does it work? Are there any pitfalls I should look out for? Thanks. -- John Polstra jdp@polstra.com John D. Polstra & Co., Inc. Seattle, Washington USA "Self-knowledge is always bad news." -- John Barth