Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Re: Re: Changing boot device with 2.6.36

[Alan McKinnon]

Apparently, though unproven, at 19:18 on Wednesday 05 January 2011, Mark 
Knecht did opine thusly:

> On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 3:50 AM, Alex Schuster <wonko@×××××××××.org> wrote:
> > Jörg Schaible writes:
> >> Alex Schuster wrote:
> >> > I would be surprised if it had this feature. AFAIK grub is already
> >> > done at this stage, the kernel has taken over. And I guess it does
> >> > not know about the LABEL= syntax, and has no code to scan all devices
> >> > for file system labels.
> >>
> >> I fear so, too. Grub finds the boot device properly, it's the kernel
> >> complaining about the value in the root option.
> >>
> >> > With an initramfs, the kernel runs an init script which can do various
> >> > stuff, like probing all devices for file system labels.
> >>
> >> I never had the need for an initrd.
> >
> > Now you do :)
> >
> >        Wonko
>
> Wonko,
>    I did my first initramfs build this last week to get RAID6 working
> for /. It went well and I was impressed at how much I could debug in a
> shell before I got it working correctly. (Big issue for me - make sure
> you copy all the /dev/sdX stuff you are going to need into the
> initramfs, and make sure mdadm is built static.)
>
>    QUESTION: What's the difference between initrd and initramfs in
> practice. As I understand it initramfs is the newer one. I assume that
> means it's preferred? Or are there times when someone wants to still
> use an initrd?


AFAIK, initramfs is the newer preferred one and it's either one or the other 
with initrd being seldom used these days if at all.

Many people still call it initrd even if int's initramfs in use - sort of a 
slang thing

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com