On Sun, Aug 12, 2012 at 8:25 AM, Rich Freeman <ri...@gentoo.org> wrote: > I think that people get this confused because 99% of linux users have > an initramfs (and about 2% of Gentoo users it seems), and most > initramfs implementations DO interpret the root=parameter. If you > specify an initramfs then the kernel actually ignores the > root=parameter entirely, mounting the initramfs as root, and passing > control to its init. The initramfs is expected to mount root (or not > - you could just run the whole system off an initramfs I guess). Most > initramfs implementations just parse the root= line on the kernel, > although it is worth noting that genkernel's initramfs does not and > uses real_root instead.
Small correction: genkernel's /init script accepts both real_root and root on the kernel command line. If real_root is not specified, the value of root is used. It seems that the real_root option is a remnant of the initrd (not intramfs) code, where root needed to be a ram disk (/dev/ram0). With initramfs, the kernel ignores root, so we are free to use it for specifying the actual root device. So, when you see grub2-mkconfig generating entries with root=..., please do not panic; this works just fine. :-)
