Ian Blenke said:
<snip>
> When you build a kernel you end up with a monolithic kernel and a number
> of modular drivers. If you compile the drivers into the monolithic
> kernel you don't need an initrd. If you compile a driver as a module you
> need to build an initrd that holds the driver and a linuxrc init script
> to load it on boot.
>
> To reiterate:
> monolithic "vmlinuz" == one big file containing your kernel and all the
> drivers that it needs.
> modular "initrd" == a filesystem containing kernel modules and a linuxrc
> init script to load drivers for your hardware.
If you have an LVM'd root filesystem, you will need an initrd image as you
require a few userspace tools to activate your LVM root before the root
filesystem is available.
> <ignoreme future=initramfs>
> There's also a new method in 2.6: initramfs. It's a CPIO archive that
> gets extracted into a ramfs root disk (that all 2.6 kernels use by
> default). The most interesting part about this is that the initramfs is
> tagged onto the end of the kernel, so you end up with one large file
> without the need for a separate initrd file. Very few folks seem to grok
> initramfs, so you'll probably not run into it yet.
> </ignoreme>
On a somewhat related note, if you've been enjoying cramfs for initrd
images, I've discovered that's no longer The Way (tm). Modern kernels, at
least over the past nine months or so, seem to prefer initramfs. What's
more, on Debian, mkinitrd is depreciated.
I've been using yaird, which is available from Unstable and Backports for
Debian Stable, for creating initramfs compatible images. mkinitrd no longer
is able to properly determine what your root device may be and completely
mangles root LVM installs which yaird handles correctly.
Just fyi.
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