init: Open /dev/console from rootfs

To avoid potential problems with an empty /dev open /dev/console
from rootfs instead of waiting to mount our root filesystem and
mounting it there.   This effectively guarantees that there will
be a device node, and it won't be on a filesystem that we will
ever unmount, so there are no issues with leaving /dev/console
open and pinning the filesystem.

This is actually more effective than automatically mounting
devtmpfs on /dev because it removes removes the occasionally
problematic assumption that /dev/console exists from the boot
code.

With this patch I was able to throw busybox on my /boot partition
(which has no /dev directory) and boot into userspace without
problems.

The only possible negative consequence I can think of is that
someone out there deliberately used did not use a character device
that is major 5 minor 2 for /dev/console.  Does anyone know of a
situation in which that could make sense?

Signed-off-by: Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com>
Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>

2 files changed, 6 insertions, 9 deletions

diff --git a/init/do_mounts_initrd.c b/init/do_mounts_initrd.c
index 614241b5200c..2b108538d0d9 100644
--- a/init/do_mounts_initrd.c
+++ b/init/do_mounts_initrd.c
@@ -30,11 +30,7 @@ static int __init do_linuxrc(void * shell)
         extern char * envp_init[];
 
         sys_close(old_fd);sys_close(root_fd);
-        sys_close(0);sys_close(1);sys_close(2);
         sys_setsid();
-        (void) sys_open("/dev/console",O_RDWR,0);
-        (void) sys_dup(0);
-        (void) sys_dup(0);
         return kernel_execve(shell, argv, envp_init);
 }
 
diff --git a/init/main.c b/init/main.c
index 4cb47a159f02..106e02d7ffa5 100644
--- a/init/main.c
+++ b/init/main.c
@@ -806,11 +806,6 @@ static noinline int init_post(void)
         system_state = SYSTEM_RUNNING;
         numa_default_policy();
 
-        if (sys_open((const char __user *) "/dev/console", O_RDWR, 0) < 0)
-                printk(KERN_WARNING "Warning: unable to open an initial console.\n");
-
-        (void) sys_dup(0);
-        (void) sys_dup(0);
 
         current->signal->flags |= SIGNAL_UNKILLABLE;
 
@@ -873,6 +868,12 @@ static int __init kernel_init(void * unused)
 
         do_basic_setup();
 
+        /* Open the /dev/console on the rootfs, this should never fail */
+        if (sys_open((const char __user *) "/dev/console", O_RDWR, 0) < 0)
+                printk(KERN_WARNING "Warning: unable to open an initial console.\n");
+
+        (void) sys_dup(0);
+        (void) sys_dup(0);
         /*
          * check if there is an early userspace init.  If yes, let it do all
          * the work