For quite some time, I’ve been unable to install and use Foresight in a virtual environment for development work. This was due to the mkinitrd program not building the correct initrd image after installing from CD.

As such, I finally took some time tonight and hacked on it. Evidently, this problem (or something similar) was found in an upstream Fedora bug. So, I tried (and hopefully succeeded) at updating mkinitrd:source in fl:2-devel with the newly released Fedora 10/11 mkinitrd. I tested it out by creating a new initrd on my busted VMware Fusion Foresight image from within a Linux rescue environment. Lo and behold, it worked.

So, what I need is for a few people to review my changes and test them out on an installable CD/DVD to make sure that (a) I didn’t remove/mangle any crucial patches, and (b) that the darn thing doesn’t have a regression now that breaks hardware that previously worked.

So, if you have the time, give the new mkinitrd a whirl on a test system. Easiest way to do this is to run conary update mkinitrd=:2-devel and then attempt to build a new initrd (don’t overwrite your old working one). Then make a new boot line in /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf that points to your new initrd and reboot and test for great justice.

Let me know if it rocks or sucks by commenting on this FITS issue.