[CentOS] couple questions about initrd.img

Robert P. J. Day

rpjday at crashcourse.ca
Sun Sep 26 14:57:37 UTC 2010


  here's hoping this is on topic.  as part of the extra goodies i'm
going to give my RHEL/centos basic admin class this week, i'm going to
get them to open up the standard initrd.img file and see what's
inside.  i just did that myself and have a couple simple questions.

  first, while the cpio archive physically contains a number of basic
/dev special files, the top-level "init" script runs "mknod" to create
them all, anyway.  not a big deal, but is it fair to say that
populating the initrd.img with those initial /dev files is redundant
since init creates them all, anyway?

  also, i note that that "init" script appears to call a couple
scripts/commands that don't exist in the initrd, such as hotplug and
mkblkdevs.  again, not a big deal but if i show the students what's in
that initrd, chances are someone's going to notice the above and ask
about it, so i might as well have an answer.  thanks.

rday

-- 

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Robert P. J. Day                               Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

        Top-notch, inexpensive online Linux/OSS/kernel courses
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