mkinitrd suggestion / ext4 support in generic kernel question

Andy Alt · 11-05-2013, 12:00 AM

I sent this to Patrick, but figured I could ask the ext4 question here: Why isn't ext4 fs support included in the generic kernel? How much overhead would it add?

Quote:

Minor suggestion...

I switched from the huge to generic kernel, forgetting generic doesn't have ext4 support.

So after I got back in

, I ran mkinitrd to create a RD image. mkinitrd ran fine and exited with a message to re-run lilo if I use the newly created image...

but didn't remind me to edit lilo.conf to use the new RD image.

In my mind, if it's worth it to mention to users to re-run lilo, it's also worth mentioning to add the appropro "initrd =" to lilo.conf,

or add ext4 support to the generic kernel

.

solarfields · 11-05-2013, 02:21 AM

well, the README.initrd is right there in /boot and says:

Quote:

4. Now that I've built an initrd, how do I use it?

Now that you've got an initrd (/boot/initrd.gz), you'll want to load
it along with the kernel at boot time. If you use LILO for your boot
loader you'll need to edit /etc/lilo.conf and add a line to load the
initrd. Here's an example section of lilo.conf showing how this is
done:

# Linux bootable partition config begins
image = /boot/vmlinuz-generic-3.2.28
initrd = /boot/initrd.gz
root = /dev/sda6
label = 3228
read-only
# Linux bootable partition config ends

jtsn · 11-05-2013, 03:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andy Alkaline

Why isn't ext4 fs support included in the generic kernel? How much overhead would it add?

Short answer:

Code:

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 115960 Jun 21 06:32 /lib/modules/3.8.13/kernel/fs/ext2/ext2.ko
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 344399 Jun 21 06:32 /lib/modules/3.8.13/kernel/fs/ext3/ext3.ko
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 806287 Jun 21 06:32 /lib/modules/3.8.13/kernel/fs/ext4/ext4.ko

(Yes, that's an -older current kernel.)

One could also remove ext2 and ext3, because ext4 should be able to mount ext2 and ext3 filesystems, too.