> Can anyone point me to "the frustrated moron's guide to building an
> initrd"?

   Usually, you don't build the image yourself. A program called
"mkinitrd" builds it for you, in the process automatically handling
dependency issues, writing a startup script, and so on. Rather
confusingly, there are two versions of the program out there, one for
Red Hat and one for Debian:

http://www.rt.com/man/mkinitrd.8.html
http://factotum.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/dwww?type=man&location=/usr/share/man/man8/mkinitrd.8.gz

   Ready for the punchline? I can't find mkinitrd in Gentoo. lvm-user
apparently has a program that makes initrd images for LVM machines, but
I don't know if it does general-purpose ones.

   So, you have two options. The easiest is to transport your kernel
image and installed modules to a Debian or Red Hat install, and use
their mkinitrd. Both programs should handle this easily, and the
Debian/Red Hat fluff shouldn't interfere with the rest of the boot.

   The other way is to use a HDD not on the Compaq controller as a root
partition. Copy over the data already stored on the Compaq array, except
for /usr and /var; the remainder should fit in a 100MB partition. Use
symlinks to connect the two. This way requires extra hardware, but
doesn't depend on having another Linux box.

       HJ Hornbeck


Reply via email to