Re: [gentoo-user] Creating an initrd for loading...

[Florian Philipp]

On Thu, 2008-03-27 at 14:31 -0400, Benjamen R. Meyer wrote:
> Florian Philipp wrote:
> > On Thu, 2008-03-27 at 12:35 -0400, Benjamen R. Meyer wrote:
> >> My main question comes down to this: I am using the 'genkernel' package
> >> to build & install the kernel and initrd image. Both show up in /boot.
> >> How much can I rely on genkernel to build a valid initrd image?
> > Try "genkernel menuconfig all" to check for a valid kernel config before
> > genkernel builds it. Refer to genkernel's man-page for further options.
>
> Yes, I did that. I ran genkernel, and generated it all. The initrd just
> doesn't seem to be working.
>
>
> >>  How can
> >> I mount the initrd image to verify it has the modules, etc. and verify
> >> it is a valid image?
> > There is a wiki-entry about it: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Initramfs
>
> Ok, so I used zcat to decompress the image, and then cpio to extract the
> data to a temporary folder. (The instructions on the wiki didn't work
> for some reason...complaints about finding cpio and zcat complaining
> about arguments). Any how...
>
> I snooped around the extracted files and was unable to find either the
> qla2xxx module (or the qla2200 modules, or any modules for that matter)
> or the qla2200 firmware. The firmware is on the hard drive (/dev/sda1 ->
> /lib/firmward/qla2200_fw.bin), and so is the module -
> /lib/modules/2.6.24-gentoo-r3/kernel/drivers/scsi/qla2xxx/qla2xxx.ko. Is
> the initrd image invalid?? Or are they stored somehow in the files
> non-obviously?
>
> How could I easily add them to the initrd image? (This is really my
> first time playing with initrd images...)
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ben
>

They are in lib/modules. I think it should work if you just copy the
modules to their respective folder and add their names to the respective
file in etc/modules.

To create a initrd new initrd, use the following command:

find . | cpio --quiet --dereference -o -H newc | gzip -9 >/boot/initrd