Fedora Core 6 Test Update: mkinitrd-5.1.19.0.2-1

Chuck Anderson cra at WPI.EDU
Wed Dec 6 06:50:33 UTC 2006


On Tue, Dec 05, 2006 at 05:01:41PM -0500, Peter Jones wrote:
> Summary     : Creates an initial ramdisk image for preloading modules.
> Description :
> Mkinitrd creates filesystem images for use as initial ramdisk (initrd)
> images.  These ramdisk images are often used to preload the block
> device modules (SCSI or RAID) needed to access the root filesystem.
> 
> In other words, generic kernels can be built without drivers for any
> SCSI adapters which load the SCSI driver as a module.  Since the
> kernel needs to read those modules, but in this case it isn't able to
> address the SCSI adapter, an initial ramdisk is used.  The initial
> ramdisk is loaded by the operating system loader (normally LILO) and
> is available to the kernel as soon as the ramdisk is loaded.  The
> ramdisk image loads the proper SCSI adapter and allows the kernel to
> mount the root filesystem.  The mkinitrd program creates such a
> ramdisk using information found in the /etc/modules.conf file.

The Description needs updating so it talks about initramfs, GRUB, and 
/etc/modprobe.conf instead of LILO and /etc/modules.conf.




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