I have a sparc system, the scsi adapter for which requires the "esp" module. I would expect genkernel to include this module in the initrd it builds and load it when booting, as occurs on x86, however it does not.
Currently, sparc loads *no* modules into the initrd/initramfs automatically. The quickest solution at this time is for you to simply compile the module into your kernel, or edit /usr/share/genkernel/sparc/modules_load and add "esp" to MODULES_SCSI then rebuild your initrd.
And actually CONFIG_SCSI_SUNESP is Y in the default config for both sparc32 & sparc64 in current genkernel. Can you provide more info? Otherwise i'll close as NEEDINFO.
He never said that he was using the default configuration. Honestly, the best solution would be to give a list of modules for the different sections for sparc so we could add them to modules_load, even if you do not use them yourself in the default configuration, somebody might use them as modules, and we should support that.
Problem is we don't recommend initrd for sparc, remember we have serious size limitations (and total = kernel+initrd or initramfs). We actually don't recommend genkernel either for this exact reason, so if he doesn't base his config on something sane (default/builtin essential drivers) it's a tough buy. He's also not saying if he's using a 2.6 kernel either, which is totally unsupported atm.
I've built the kernel myself, just using genkernel to make the initrd for it (since it's far easier than making my own). I didn't think the size limitation applied to the initrd as well (and my experience would seem to contradict that, I'm sure I've used a >2M initrd and >1M kernel wheras <3M kernels hit the size limit. But perhaps I'm remembering wrong) - the size limit was precisely why I built even the scsi modules as modules. I've tried with both 2.4 and 2.6 kernels.
Note that the uncompressed kernel size is what accounts for size, not the compressed one - thus on sparc it doesn't help in any way to have a compressed one.
Ok, SPARC has this module in the kernel config rather than the initrd module list so this really is a non-issue (if you used genkernel for both steps it would have been loaded), closing bug...
It is still an issue - how do you suggest I make the initrd for a self-compiled kernel, other than using genkernel? (I can and have made initrds by hand, but it's a real performance)
Well, you'd edit /usr/share/genkernel/sparc/modules_load and add the needed modules to MODULES_SCSI and then make sure you boot with the doscsi param (and things should work)... or just compile SCSI into your kernel?
"Well, you'd edit /usr/share/genkernel/sparc/modules_load and add the needed modules to MODULES_SCSI and then make sure you boot with the doscsi param (and things should work)..." Indeed, but why isn't MODULES_SCSI set to a list of the sparc scsi modules anyway? I see no reason it shouldn't be, and it makes things easier for the user.
