Matt Price said: > hi there, > > can someone help me figure out what exactly initrd is, and why > kernels use it? I have looked through the docs, and I understand that > it's thefile used for an initial ramdisk in some cases, but I don't > understand why it would be used in some cases and not in others. So for > inst ance, the demudi kernel I just installed seems to demand the use of > initrd, and I take it GRUB needs an anitrd argument to load the kernel. > But why don't my own self-compiled kernels require an initrd argument at > boot (nor have an initrd file anywhere in /boot, as far as I can tell)?
the initrd image usually holds a small basic set of drivers used to get the system to a basic working state(disk controllers, filesystem drivers, perhaps raid or LVM as well), so it can mount the root filesystem and access the 'rest' of the drivers. I haven't looked into it much but I think it's primarily used so that you can still use modules in the kernel, having everything built into the kernel doesn't always work(some drivers may conflict, or may require certain options to be passed to them to work). If you build your own kernel for your own hardware, which it seems that you do(I do too) you probably don't need initrd(I don't use it myself), since you can just build your drivers directly into the kernel. nate -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]