> I have Red Hat 6.1 installed, and am about to rebuild the kernel. My
> /etc/lilo.conf has this line in it:
>
> initrd=/boot/initrd-2.12.12-20.img
>
> Now, from what I can tell, I'll need to use mkinitrd to make a new initrd
> file that matches up with my new (2.2.14, I think -- the latest stable)
> kernel. My specific questions is: at what point in the process do I need to
> do this? This isn't addressed in the kernel how-to, and initrd wasn't
> incorporated into Red Hat 5.2, from what I can remember, so this is the
> first time I've come across it.
---
This is one of the most confusing parts of kernel building -- the
documentation (hey, read the man page?) is scattered and difficult to
parse. I'm running SUSE 63 with a 2214 kernel and decided to forgo
the ramdisk entirely -- to do so, you just have to make sure all the drivers
your kernel needs to boot are linked in -- not modules. So like I have
SCSI linked in -- be sure that ext2 filesystem and ELF modules are
hard linked -- somehow I got two configurations that didn't work and traced
it back to those options getting turned off...*duh*.
Obviously if you have ESDI devices, hard code that in instead --
the make sure the initrd isn't a 'global option' (as it was in SUSE)
my RedHat 6.0 install doesn't have it global (I have it running on
another system).
Anyway, I wrote up a recipe to remind myself of the steps
since I was constantly forgetting the steps I came up with the
following:
----------------------
<version> = kernel version, ex. - 2.2.10
1) make bzImage -- a compressed kernel
2) make modules
3) make modules_install - as root, puts kernel support modules in
/lib/modules/<version>
4) mkinitrd /boot/initrd-<version>.img <version>
"/boot/initrd-<version>.img" seems to be a "standard" name and
location; The version info is used to find where to obtain
the modules that will be 'pre-loaded' onto the ram disk
>>> NOTE <<< for this to work you must have a loopback device
configured into your kernel. So before you go any further --
if you want to repeat this in the future, you better make
sure the loopback device is config'ed in (under Block Devices)
5) cp /usr/src/linux/System.map /boot/System.map.<version>
6) rm /boot/System.map; ln -s /boot/System.map.<version> /boot/System.map
7) mv /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz-<version>
8) edit lilo.conf
The first 'image=<name>' line is the start of the section that
describe the default boot parameters; The other sections are
alternates that can be selected at boot time (press 'TAB' at
the "lilo:" prompt at boot time to see available parameter\
sets (as labeled by the 'label=' line)
If you are installing a potentially unstable kernel, you might
not want to initially make it the default. Either way we should
manually select our choice at boot time.
So a sample new setup:
---
image=/boot/vmlinuz-<version>
label=linux-<version label>
root=/dev/sda5
initrd=/boot/initrd-<version>.img
read-only
---
Image is the compressed kernel image copied into place in '7' and
made in step '1'. Label is whatever, but hopefully a reminder
of what this paramset is about. root=root device to boot from --
where the rest of the OS is. initrd is the ram disk made and copied
into place step 4 above. read-only specifies to initially mount
the root device as read-only until fsck has verified the device.
9) /sbin/lilo -- this installs the new 'option list' for the lilo boot
loader to use on the next boot AND calcs the checksums of the
images -- if any images change, they need new checksums!!
--------------------------
> Or, can I just not bother with initrd? Is it worth having?
---
I just chucked it -- I also disabled 'initrd' support in the
kernel I built, but left ramdisks as a module.
Good luck...
-linda
************
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