what is initramfs and how can I edit one?

mangolicious · 03-12-2005, 03:04 PM

I realize that initrd and initramfs are not the same thing. initramdisk(initrd) just a gzipped ext2 filesystem. They're easy to edit. Initramfs is similar in that it is also compressed using gzip but other than that it's completely different. So then the question is what is the difference, and how do I change/edit/customize one?

Simon Bridge · 03-14-2005, 12:54 AM

try
http://lwn.net/Articles/14776/

mangolicious · 03-16-2005, 10:27 PM

Thanks, Simon Bridge, for that article. It really pointed me in the right direction. I figured out that to extract the contents of an initramfs you do the following:

Code:

# mount /boot
# mkdir /tmp/initramfs
# cd /tmp/initramfs
# gzip -dc /boot/*initramfs filename here* | cpio -i

that extracts the contents of /boot/*initramfs filename here* to /tmp/initramfs