Re: [expert] Mkinitrd Necessary for building kernel?

[Jeferson Lopes Zacco]

Not at all. it depends on how you configure your kernel. E.g., you use an ext3 partition bu yu don't compile support for ext3 directly into the kernel, but as a module; so you need an initrd to mount the partition at boot.


Wooky
Rick Friedman wrote:

I've rebuilt my kernel and it works fine.(Now running 2.4.19). No
problem on boot up... no problem at all. However, after rebuilding the
kernel, I saw some other instructions that said it was necessary to
create an initrd image. I hadn't done that and everything seems to be
fine.

However, curious person that I am, I went and ran mkinitrd and created
the initrd image for the kernel. I then put the information into
lilo.conf, ran lilo and rebooted. Everything booted fine... no
problems... just as without the initrd image.

My question is simply, is the initrd image necessary? What does it do?
Is it supposed to speed up the boot process? I can't really see any
difference in boot up. I know it's being loaded at boot up because I see
message saying it's being loaded and then unloaded later during boot up.

Thanks,
Rick







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