4 ms·

I think that was the way for Linux when I were a lad - everything could be compiled into tw kernel to the point the normal / partition could be mounted. Assumin

I think that was the way for Linux when I were a lad - everything could be compiled into tw kernel to the point the normal / partition could be mounted. Assuming it was under 2gb? Is it still the case, with UEFI and systemd and other modern things that the damn kids do nowadays?

jschwartzi 8y ago
Yes. I have a systemd-based embedded system that uses initramfs so that I can execute some things out of RAM when I need to erase the root filesystem. The old mechanism was initrd which was an ext2 filesystem that was baked into the kernel. The new system, initramfs uses a CPIO archive instead. But it's basically the same idea.
- voltagex_ 8y ago
  Does anyone know why CPIO is used in particular? The commands for dealing with those archives are particularly arcane.
  - JdeBP 8y ago
    For dealing with cpio archives, just use pax. * http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?pax http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?pax * https://manpages.debian.org/unstable/pax/pax.1.en.html https://manpages.debian.org/unstable/pax/pax.1.en.html * http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/ http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/ The answer to Why? is given in the kernel doco itself, in Documentation/filesystems/ramfs-rootfs-initramfs.txt .
  - vetinari 8y ago
    Because it is simple, much simpler than tar, and has an universally agreed serialization format, without variants, unlike tar.