Re: [Xen-users] what does "initrd-2.6.32.9.img" contains

[Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik@xxxxxx>]

On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 11:32:17PM +0800, lei yang wrote:
>    On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 8:35 PM, Pasi Kärkkäinen <[1]pasik@xxxxxx> wrote:
> 
>      On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 04:40:33PM +0800, lei yang wrote:
>      >    Hi all
>      >
>      >    If I use nfsroot boot the xen dom0, I find it works well if not use
>      >    initrd-2.6.32.9.img.
>      >
>      >    what does  "initrd-2.6.32.9.img" contains?
>      >
> 
>      It's the "initial ramdisk" for Linux kernel. It contains (some) driver
>      modules for the kernel,
>      and a script to load them and to mount the actual root filesystem and
>      switch to it.
> 
>      All the distros nowadays compile drivers as modules (ie. not included in
>      the kernel itself),
>      and use the initrd image to load only the needed/required drivers at
>      boot time.
> 
> 
> 
>    Thanks Pasi, I have another question, why we need this initrd ramdisk,
>    because we can put the kernel module in the dir "/lib" of rootfs, if we
>    ignor the initrd, it should work
> 

Because you can't access the rootfs before you have the drivers loaded!!
initrd contains the drivers required to access the *rootfs*.

-- Pasi

>    Lei
> 
> 
> 
>      -- Pasi
> 
>    --
>    "We learn from failure, not from success!"
> 
> References
> 
>    Visible links
>    1. mailto:pasik@xxxxxx

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