[pkg-cryptsetup-devel] initramfs-tools: Please provide an API or best practices for custom initramfs hook configuration

[Guilhem Moulin]

On Fri, 11 Dec 2015 at 00:54:03 +0000, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> On Thu, 2015-12-10 at 12:15 +0100, Jonas Meurer wrote:
>> Hi there,
>> 
>> On Thu, 10 Dec 2015 02:52:11 +0100 Guilhem Moulin 
>> wrote:
>>> AFAIK there is no documentation for where users should set variables to
>>> configure an initramfs hook.  There are a couple of workaround, all
>>> hacky and/or relying on undocumented properties of initramfs-tools(8):
>>> 
>>>   1/ Setting said variable in initramfs.conf(5).  (Since hook scripts
>>>      are executed is sub-shells the variable need to be exported.)  This
>>>      is somewhat ugly since initramfs.conf(5) is the configuration file
>>>      *for mkinitramfs*, not for the hook files.
>>> 
>>>   2/ Using /usr/share/initramfs-tools/conf-hooks.d/$hook.  This is an
>>>      undocumented (short of an entry in the changelog) hack.  Also
>>>      unless that file is marked as a conffile (which violates the
>>>      policy) user modifications are wiped upon upgrade.
>> 
>> If I got it right (didn't find documentation about it), the current
>> purpose of conf-hooks.d seems to be to configure *mkinitramfs* in a
>> proper way required by the hook scripts, not to set configuration
>> variables for the hook scripts themselves, no?
> 
> The only documentation I'm aware of is in the changelog:
> 
>   * mkinitramfs: Export MODULES, allows hook scripts to act accordingly.
>     (closes: #421658) Add /usr/share/initramfs-tools/conf-hooks.d for hooks
>     options on mkinitramfs run. Do not land in initramfs.

Please consider adding it to the mkinitramfs manpage, too.  Package
maintainers can't rely on something that's only documented in the
manpage, IMHO.
 
> Also, it doesn't make any sense to me, to put hook-specific
> configuration into a namespace shared across all hooks.  You can
> always add a configuration file to your own package and source it in
> your hook script.

Using /etc/$package/initramfs adds a useless directory level for
packages that only ship initramfs hook and script.  The directory
/etc/default is shared, also.

-- 
Guilhem.
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