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authorThomas Horsley <tom.horsley@ccur.com>2006-07-30 03:04:12 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@g5.osdl.org>2006-07-31 13:28:44 -0700
commit0a5eca6530eb4d0120981936058537c24a2f92ce (patch)
tree0e9d49c3dbaa646f578d9fb0c83a179b5775b1a3 /Documentation/initrd.txt
parent5a06a363ef48444186f18095ae1b932dddbbfa89 (diff)
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[PATCH] documentation: Documentation/initrd.txt
I spent a long time the other day trying to examine an initrd image on a fedora core 5 system because the initrd.txt file is apparently obsolete. Here is a patch which I hope will reduce future confusion for others. Signed-off-by: Thomas Horsley <tom.horsley@ccur.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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diff --git a/Documentation/initrd.txt b/Documentation/initrd.txt
index b1b6440237a6..15f1b35deb34 100644
--- a/Documentation/initrd.txt
+++ b/Documentation/initrd.txt
@@ -72,6 +72,22 @@ initrd adds the following new options:
initrd is mounted as root, and the normal boot procedure is followed,
with the RAM disk still mounted as root.
+Compressed cpio images
+----------------------
+
+Recent kernels have support for populating a ramdisk from a compressed cpio
+archive, on such systems, the creation of a ramdisk image doesn't need to
+involve special block devices or loopbacks, you merely create a directory on
+disk with the desired initrd content, cd to that directory, and run (as an
+example):
+
+find . | cpio --quiet -c -o | gzip -9 -n > /boot/imagefile.img
+
+Examining the contents of an existing image file is just as simple:
+
+mkdir /tmp/imagefile
+cd /tmp/imagefile
+gzip -cd /boot/imagefile.img | cpio -imd --quiet
Installation
------------