3 ms·
What's an initrd and why do I need one?
by olgeni 14y ago
What's an initrd and why do I need one?
- drcube 14y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initrd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initrd The one I have tells my kernel how to boot into my encrypted drive. It is also necessary for RAID, LVM, and NFS root filesystems, loading special modules and drivers before booting, and loading swap back into memory after hibernation.
- rjbond3rd 14y agoThe bootloader loads the kernel + a tiny, temporary initial (init) filesystem in RAM (e.g. ramdisk -> rd), where the kernel can load other modules to load the real filesystem (otherwise it would need support for many filesystems compiled in, vs. modules).