I just tried to install dracut, a replacement for the initramfs-tools on a fresh Ubuntu 12.10 server to use the advanced features of dracut for booting from NFS over two bonded interfaces.
Unfortunately the installation encountered the following conflict:
root@ubuntu:~# aptitude install dracut
The following NEW packages will be installed:
cryptsetup{a} cryptsetup-bin{a} dmraid{a} dracut{b} kpartx{a} kpartx-boot{a} libcryptsetup4{a} libdevmapper-event1.02.1{a} libdmraid1.0.0.rc16{a} libreadline5{a} lvm2{a} mdadm{a} postfix{a} ssl-cert{a} watershed{a}
0 packages upgraded, 15 newly installed, 0 to remove and 2 not upgraded.
Need to get 3,004 kB of archives. After unpacking 8,428 kB will be used.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
dracut : Conflicts: initramfs-tools but 0.103ubuntu0.2 is installed.
Conflicts: initramfs-tools:i386 which is a virtual package.
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:
Keep the following packages at their current version:
1) dracut [Not Installed]
Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?]
The proposed solution "dracut [Not Installed]" does not help. Unfortunately I didn't find much information on dracut on Ubuntu so that I could identify if it should work. I found the following bug report in debian which is unsolved until now: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=669342
I quickly tested the installation of dracut on a Ubuntu 12.04 server and it installed fine, but I need it for Ubuntu 12.10.
I already tried to force dpkg to ignore the conflicts, but the result was the same
aptitude -o Dpkg::Options::="--force-conflicts" install dracut
Installing dracut from source is working, but to include network setup in the initramfs, the package dracut-network is needed which I couldn't find the sources for and even so it's available in Ubuntu 12.10 it depends on the dracut package...
Can someone help me how to install dracut and maybe share some insides on why it's so hard to use dracut in Ubuntu?