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From: Tom Horsley <tom.horsley@ccur.com>
To: Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Cc: bugsy <bugsy@ccur.com>
Subject: patch for Documentation/initrd.txt?
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 09:17:04 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <1154006224.5166.4.camel@tweety> (raw)

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 444 bytes --]

I spend hours the other day trying to examine a fedora core 5
initrd file in the mistaken belief that the Documentation/initrd.txt
file might contain relevant information :-). It didn't, but
many web searches later I finally discovered the new key
to decrypting initrd files. Would it be possible to add the
attached patch (or a better one if someone can explain things
in more detail) to the initrd.txt file to avoid future
confusion? Thanks.

[-- Attachment #2: initrd-doc-patch --]
[-- Type: text/plain, Size: 954 bytes --]

--- linux-2.6.17.7/Documentation/initrd.txt	2006-07-27 08:49:30.000000000 -0400
+++ linux-2.6.17.7/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
 ------------

             reply	other threads:[~2006-07-27 13:17 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 7+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2006-07-27 13:17 Tom Horsley [this message]
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2006-07-27 17:26 patch for Documentation/initrd.txt? Al Boldi
2006-07-27 18:52 ` H. Peter Anvin
2006-07-27 20:35   ` Al Boldi
2006-07-27 20:38     ` H. Peter Anvin
2006-07-28 13:58       ` Al Boldi
2006-07-27 20:19 ` Rik van Riel

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