Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Grant Taylor <gtaylor@×××××××××××××××××××××.net>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] RAID-1 on secondary disks how?
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2019 00:36:58
Message-Id: b1cfe4e2-25a4-d0f3-8819-e38479e6c831@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-user] RAID-1 on secondary disks how? by Neil Bothwick
1 On 01/29/2019 02:17 PM, Neil Bothwick wrote:
2 > AFAIR the initramfs code is built into the kernel, not as an option. The
3 > reason given for using a cpio archive is that it is simple and available
4 > in the kernel. The kernel itself has an initramfs built into it which is
5 > executed automatically, it's just that this initramfs is usually empty.
6 > So loading an initramfs is trivial for any kernel, and loading anything
7 > after that is handled by the initramfs.
8
9 That may be the case now.
10
11 But when I started messing with Linux nearly 20 years ago that was not
12 the case. The kernel and the initramfs / initrd were two distinct
13 things. I remember having to calculate where the kernel stopped on a
14 floppy disk so that you could start writing the initramfs / initrd image
15 after the kernel.
16
17 Or for fun, modify the flag (bit?) to tell the kernel to prompt to to
18 swap disks for the initramfs / initrd.
19
20 Both of which needed to tell the kernel where the initramfs / initrd
21 started on the medium.
22
23 That was a LONG time ago. More than a few things have changed since then.
24
25 > That only leaves loading the initramfs file from disk, which is handled
26 > by the bootloader along with the kernel file.
27
28 That assumes that there is a boot loader. There wasn't one with the old
29 Slackware boot & root disks.
30
31
32
33 --
34 Grant. . . .
35 unix || die

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-user] RAID-1 on secondary disks how? Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o>