Why initrd

This has saved me many times. If something goes wrong, kernel drops me to a working prompt I can use to access my rig. If initrd goes broken, I need a boot stick that is missing usually. Now when Kernel knows what to do to get to boot prompt, I can use my system tools just usually to fix the problem.

Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Collectives on Stack Overflow. Learn more. Is it possible to boot the Linux kernel without creating an initrd image?

Asked 10 years, 4 months ago. Active 1 year, 3 months ago. Viewed 23k times. Improve this question. Neel Neel 9, 14 14 gold badges 47 47 silver badges 70 70 bronze badges. In principle the initrd is optional, as long as your kernel has all the necessary drivers compiled into it for finding the root file system.

See TuxOnIce. Explain the output of swap -s and swap -l. Hi Solaris Folks : , I need to calculate the swap usage on solaris server, please let me understand the output of below swap -s and swap -l commands. Help with adding a new driver in initrd at install time. I have a really old distro FC7 that I am trying to make compatible with some new hardware ie. Red Hat. Could I get the initrd. Hi, all: The vmlinuz Swap device file and swap sapce.

Hi I have an integrity machine rx and rx running hp-ux I'm planning to fine tune the system: - I would like to know when does the memory swap space spill over to the device swap space? Fedora installation getting stuck in initrd. I had tried installing Fedora 10 earlier without creating new partitions real foolish and ignorant of me :o:o and tried creating partitions using Fedora10 bootable.

It didnt work. Then I created a free partition and again tried installing Swap config - Mirror swap or not? An interesting test would be to do something custom in a script in initrd and see if it ever gets executed I suspect not.

Last edited by mlinuxguy on Fri Mar 01, am, edited 1 time in total. Post by mlinuxguy » Fri Mar 01, am You are correct, its been too long since I messed with those files.

We do need to have a uInitrd image, I recall now having to recreate that when it was deleted. Usually they are not versioned e. The advantage of using initrd is that when Linux kernel fails to boot because it is not able to find out the root file system or init is not exist, we can have a shell from initrd at least.

Such that we can recover or find out the problem. Otherwise, the Linux kernel will keep rebooting. That's one reason why I prefer my Debian installation. There are still many people does use Windows which does not access such a file system directly and this makes people modify the boot.

Post by back2future » Fri Mar 01, am If one wants or needs a backup rootfs or boots without using storage access for rootfs an initrd initial ram disk is one possibility, besides extended kernels, that include. Improve this question. Rui F Ribeiro This wiki. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Henrik supports the community Henrik supports the community 4, 1 1 gold badge 12 12 silver badges 25 25 bronze badges. There are many reason to have an initramfs, some are below.

Having an initramfs makes sense on PC-style hardware with lots of hot-pluggable devices. On the other hand, it makes no sense to boot an embedded operating system using an initramfs. Just use a kernel that supports the particular hardware configuration it is built for. Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. Sign up using Facebook. Sign up using Email and Password. Post as a guest Name.

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