Latest GNU software in Slackware

Alien Bob · 02-10-2009, 03:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by guanx

There are two ways to boot with an initial ramdisk. One is to pack the filesystem into the kernel image, the other is to use an external initrd file. I believe they share the same low level code, but any difference is still possible in case of bugs.

Slackware uses an external initramfs by specifying it with an "initrd=" line in /etc/lilo.conf. This initramfs image is created by Slackware's mkinitrd program which calls /bin/cpio for the actual packing.

Alternatively, when you use an initramfs appended to the kernel image file, you do this by configuring your kernel build for that. When the kernel's compilation process creates the initramfs image, it will use it's own cpio implementation independent of the OS. So in this case, Slackware's cpio version does not matter.

Eric

guanx · 02-10-2009, 04:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alien Bob

Slackware uses an external initramfs by specifying it with an "initrd=" line in /etc/lilo.conf. This initramfs image is created by Slackware's mkinitrd program which calls /bin/cpio for the actual packing.

Alternatively, when you use an initramfs appended to the kernel image file, you do this by configuring your kernel build for that. When the kernel's compilation process creates the initramfs image, it will use it's own cpio implementation independent of the OS. So in this case, Slackware's cpio version does not matter.

Eric

In the latter case, you may also use a pre-packed cpio file.