Re: Initramfs from existing vmlinuz

["Martin Schlemmer" <Martin.Schlemmer@nwu.ac.za>]

>>> On 2008/12/24 at 01:34 AM, Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 24, 2008 at 12:28:53AM +0200, Martin Schlemmer wrote:

Hi Willy

>> I had a bit of an accident, and wondered if somebody already had to try to 
> extract the initramfs image from an existing vmlinuz?
>> 
>>  I did try google, but either my search terms was not right, or nobody 
> really touched on the subject before, because all the results mostly dealt 
> with an external image.
>> 
>> Any advice will be appreciated.
> 
> yes, it happens to me from time to time.
> You first have to extract and uncompress the ELF image from vmlinuz. For
> this, look for the gzip signature 1F 8B 08 in your vmlinuz, and feed all
> data starting from this point to zcat. Either you do the same on the
> resulting file -and you may find several compressed images- or you simply
> pass it through "objdump -h". It will show you a .init.ramfs section. Use
> the fourth field as the file offset, and dump from that position. You'll
> find your initramfs, likely starting with 1F 8B 08 since it's supposed
> to be compressed with gzip.
> 
> You need an hex editor, dd, zcat and objdump for this. It's not much
> complicated once you have the tools, but it might require a few attempts
> before finding the right image (I tend to find config.gz before initramfs).
> 

Appreciated, I should be able to go from here now - just getting the starting point is sometimes the main issue.


Thanks

M