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The terminilogy of initramfs/initrd is used pretty lossely, even by |
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kernel devs. My understanding is that typically 'initrd' is refering to |
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an actual filesystem image (created on a loopback) and get's mounted a a |
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ramdisk and used at the root filesystem. Where as an initramfs image is |
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just a CPIO archive that gets unpacked into a tmpfs filesystem that is |
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then mounted as root. initramfs images can be either built into the |
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kernel image or loaded from an external file. Byeond the format there's |
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not much difference bewteen them. In theory an initramfs iamge could be a |
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bit smaller as it doesn't have to drag around the filesystem metadata |
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with it. Also, as it's just a CPIO archive a driver for the |
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filesystem type need not be built into the kernel. |
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|
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Wikipedia considers initramfs & initrd to refer to the same thing: |
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|
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initrd |
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|
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Cheers, |
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|
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-J |
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|
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-- |
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On Tue, May 29, 2007 at 09:38:17PM -0700, Wil Reichert wrote: |
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> On 5/29/07, Joshua Hoblitt <jhoblitt@××××××××××.edu> wrote: |
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> >On Wed, May 30, 2007 at 02:33:18AM +0200, Florian D. wrote: |
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> >> FYI, genkernel is creating an initrd, not an initramfs, which is the |
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> >preferred way nowadays. |
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> >> Information on how to setup an initramfs can be found at: |
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> >> http://lldn.timesys.com/docs/initramfs |
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> > |
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> >Umm, I think you need to check your facts. genkernel creates a gzip'd |
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> >CPIO archive named "initramfs-genkernel-arch-versionstring"... |
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> |
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> So the command 'genkernel initrd' creates a file called |
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> 'initramfs-...' which contains files called etc/initrd.defaults and |
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> etc/initrd.scripts. Poor naming conventions but it looks like an |
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> initrd to me. |
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> |
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> Wil |
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> -- |
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> gentoo-amd64@g.o mailing list |
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> |