[CentOS] PXE-Kernel crashes with "RAMDISK: incomplete write ..." after modifiying initrd.img

Thu Mar 26 16:04:51 UTC 2009
James Pearson <james-p at moving-picture.com>

Frank Thommen wrote:
> 
> To modify the initrd.img, I took the original CentOS 5.2 image, unpacked 
> with cpio/gunzip and replaced modules/2.6.18-92.el5/x86_64/e1000e.ko 
> with a current version.  This driver module had been created on a 
> freshly installed CentOS 5.2 host with kernel 2.6.18-92.el5 and w/o any 
> updates.  After adding the driver, I re-archived and re-packed the image 
> and replaced the initrd.img on my tftp server.
>  
> The new image is considerably bigger than the old one (12 MB vs. 5.7 MB) 
> which puzzles me, as the driver file itself is 2.8 MB (compared to the 
> old e1000e.ko with ca 170 KB) but the resulting modules.cgz is only 
> around 700 KB bigger than the original one.  All files have been 
> compressed with `gzip -9`.

What cpio options did you use to re-create modules/modules.cgz and then 
the initrd.img?

Did you gzip the initrd.img after cpio'ing it?

It might be better to wait for CentOS 5.3 - as that has an updated 
e1000e module - hopefully 5.3 might be out this week end ...

James Pearson