initramfs: add option to preserve mtime from initramfs cpio images
When unpacking the cpio into the initramfs, mtimes are not preserved by default. This patch adds an INITRAMFS_PRESERVE_MTIME option that allows mtimes stored in the cpio image to be used when constructing the initramfs. For embedded applications that run exclusively out of the initramfs, this is invaluable: When building embedded application initramfs images, its nice to know when the files were actually created during the build process - that makes it easier to see what files were modified when so we can compare the files that are being used on the image with the files used during the build process. This might help (for example) to determine if the target system has all the updated files you expect to see w/o having to check MD5s etc. In our environment, the whole system runs off the initramfs partition, and seeing the modified times of the shared libraries (for example) helps us find bugs that may have been introduced by the build system incorrectly propogating outdated shared libraries into the image. Similarly, many of the initializion/configuration files in /etc might be dynamically built by the build system, and knowing when they were modified helps us sanity check whether the target system has the "latest" files etc. Finally, we might use last modified times to determine whether a hot fix should be applied or not to the running ramfs. Signed-off-by: Nye Liu <nyet@nyet.org> Cc: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
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