Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: udev: what's up with old /dev ? | From | Mathieu Segaud <> | Date | Wed, 13 Oct 2004 15:08:23 +0200 |
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"Harald Dunkel" <harald.dunkel@t-online.de> disait dernièrement que :
> Greg KH wrote: >> On Tue, Oct 12, 2004 at 10:16:54PM +0200, Harald Dunkel wrote:
> Sorry, somewhere in this thread I had clicked the wrong > reply button. > > Talking about initramfs: I am still trying to become > familiar with this stuff. I have found a lot of small > pieces of information (still reading), and the cpio > stuff in the kernel usr directory. But I have 2 questions: > > Why is the initramfs built at the beginning of the > kernel build procedure? Wouldn't it be more reasonable > to build it when all kernel modules are available?
because for now, the initramfs built into the kernel is quasi-empty and isn't used as-is.
> > And why is it compiled into the kernel at all? The > README in Documentation/early-userspace says > > <quote> > "Early userspace" is a set of libraries and programs that provide > various pieces of functionality that are important enough to be > available while a Linux kernel is coming up, but that don't need to be > run inside the kernel itself. > </quote>
the last statement just says it does not run in _kernelspace_ but in _userspace_. it has to be in the kernel. I use it to mount my dm-crypt'd / and no initrd is needed. (well as I wasn't able to get a small cryptsetup binary, my kernels are ~1850kB worth of size)
> So why compile it into the kernel? IMHO it would be more > flexible to load the early-userspace stuff similar to initrd > via the grub command line. Compiling it into the kernel > could be optional.
huh, well initrd is / that is mounted over the so-called _rootfs_ initramfs is here to _be_ that rootfs. So no pivot_root needed and the run-it program included in klibc tarballs takes care of wiping-out everything that could waste memory into the initramfs before mounting the real /. If it was to compiled out of the kernel, it would just be an initrd....
rootfs is _needed_ for mounting the real root, so is initramfs.
have a nice day,
Mathieu
-- "My pan plays down an unprecedented amount of our national debt."
George W. Bush February 27, 2001 From a speech concerning the proposed federal budget.
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