linux-kernel - [PATCH] documentation: Documentation/initrd.txt

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Date:	Thu, 27 Jul 2006 11:26:43 -0400
From:	Tom Horsley <tom.horsley@...r.com>
To:	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Cc:	akpm@...l.org
Subject: [PATCH] documentation: Documentation/initrd.txt

From: Thomas Horsley <tom.horsley@...r.com>

I spent a long time the other day trying to examine an initrd
image on a fedora core 5 system because the initrd.txt file
is apparently obsolete. Here is a patch which I hope
will reduce future confusion for others.

Signed-off-by: Thomas Horsley <tom.horsley@...r.com>

---

I'm resubmitting this according to the SubmittingPatches
guidelines. This was made from the 2.6.17.7 tree, but
I don't think initrd.txt has changed much in any of the
trees. I know I'm not supposed to send an attachment, but
I see evolution has already screwed up my cut and paste
attempt and who knows what will happen by the time it
goes through exchange, so I'm adding the patch as an
attachment as well.

--- Documentation/initrd.txt	2006-07-27 08:49:30.000000000 -0400
+++ Documentation/initrd.txt	2006-07-27 09:02:04.000000000 -0400
@@ -73,6 +73,22 @@
     initrd is mounted as root, and the normal boot procedure is
followed,
     with the RAM disk still mounted as root.

+Compressed cpio images
+----------------------
+
+Recent kernels have support for populating a ramdisk from a compressed
cpio
+archive, on such systems, the creation of a ramdisk image doesn't need
to
+involve special block devices or loopbacks, you merely create a
directory on
+disk with the desired initrd content, cd to that directory, and run (as
an
+example):
+
+find . | cpio --quiet -c -o | gzip -9 -n > /boot/imagefile.img
+
+Examining the contents of an existing image file is just as simple:
+
+mkdir /tmp/imagefile
+cd /tmp/imagefile
+gzip -cd /boot/imagefile.img | cpio -imd --quiet

 Installation
 ------------

View attachment "initrd-doc-patch" of type "text/plain" (924 bytes)