Re: [Xen-users] what does "initrd-2.6.32.9.img" contains

[lei yang <yanglei.fage@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 8:35 PM, Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik@xxxxxx> wrote:

On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 04:40:33PM +0800, lei yang wrote:
>    Hi all
>
>    If I use nfsroot boot the xen dom0, I find it works well if not use
>    initrd-2.6.32.9.img.
>
>    what does  "initrd-2.6.32.9.img" contains?
>

It's the "initial ramdisk" for Linux kernel. It contains (some) driver modules for the kernel,
and a script to load them and to mount the actual root filesystem and switch to it.

All the distros nowadays compile drivers as modules (ie. not included in the kernel itself),
and use the initrd image to load only the needed/required drivers at boot time.

 

 

Thanks Pasi, I have another question, why we need this initrd ramdisk, because we can put the kernel module in the dir "/lib" of rootfs, if we ignor the initrd, it should work

 

Lei

 

 

-- Pasi

-- 
"We learn from failure, not from success!"
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