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Discover the Anatomy of initrd

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the oh-you-clever-pr-people dept.

IdaAshley writes "The Linux initial RAM disk (initrd) is a temporary root file system that is mounted during system boot to support the two-state boot process. It contains various executables and drivers that permit the real root file system to be mounted, after which the initrd RAM disk is unmounted and its memory freed. In this article explore the initial RAM disk for Linux 2.6, including its creation and use in the Linux kernel. In many embedded Linux systems, the initrd is the final root file system."

3 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. Great tutorial by gigne · · Score: 5, Informative

    This looks to be a pretty good tutorial.

    As well as mkinitrd, there are some cool tools coming along that help build an initrd.
    Here is one I have used, and although it's very early in it's development cycle.
    http://yaird.alioth.debian.org/

    Are there any more that are actually easy to use?

    --
    Signature v3.0, now with 42% less memory usage.
  2. More More More!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful
    More of these types of articles on Slashdot, please. This is "News I Can Use".



    Stick to our techie roots.

  3. Options for fast booting by wall0159 · · Score: 5, Interesting


    I don't know much about this, but am curious.

    Why, once the system is booted cleanly, can't it save its state in initrd, and just load the state the next time without going through the boot process? Would that result in fast booting?