On 01/29/2019 02:17 PM, Neil Bothwick wrote:
AFAIR the initramfs code is built into the kernel, not as an option. The
reason given for using a cpio archive is that it is simple and available
in the kernel. The kernel itself has an initramfs built into it which is
executed automatically, it's just that this initramfs is usually empty.
So loading an initramfs is trivial for any kernel, and loading anything
after that is handled by the initramfs.
That may be the case now.
But when I started messing with Linux nearly 20 years ago that was not
the case. The kernel and the initramfs / initrd were two distinct
things. I remember having to calculate where the kernel stopped on a
floppy disk so that you could start writing the initramfs / initrd image
after the kernel.
Or for fun, modify the flag (bit?) to tell the kernel to prompt to to
swap disks for the initramfs / initrd.
Both of which needed to tell the kernel where the initramfs / initrd
started on the medium.
That was a LONG time ago. More than a few things have changed since then.
That only leaves loading the initramfs file from disk, which is handled
by the bootloader along with the kernel file.
That assumes that there is a boot loader. There wasn't one with the old
Slackware boot & root disks.
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
