moving on to picking apart the initrd/initramfs mechanism, i'm
confused (what else is new?) by this portion of drivers/block/Kconfig:
...
config BLK_DEV_RAM
tristate "RAM disk support"
---help---
Saying Y here will allow you to use a portion of your RAM memory as
a block device, so that you can make file systems on it, read and
write to it and do all the other things that you can do with normal
block devices (such as hard drives). It is usually used to load and
store a copy of a minimal root file system off of a floppy into RAM
during the initial install of Linux.
Note that the kernel command line option "ramdisk=XX" is now
obsolete. For details, read <file:Documentation/ramdisk.txt>.
To compile this driver as a module, choose M here: the
module will be called rd.
Most normal users won't need the RAM disk functionality, and can
thus say N here.
...
as i read it, this option refers exclusively to supporting the older
filesystem-style initrd image, not to the newer initramfs-style image.
first, i'm amused by the comment that suggests most users can say "N"
here since, if you check the architecture default configs:
$ grep -r "CONFIG_BLK_DEV_RAM=y" arch | wc -l
191
$ grep -r "CONFIG_BLK_DEV_RAM is not set" arch | wc -l
82
apparently, most architectures don't quite agree with that "don't
really need it" philosophy. :-)
but i'm more curious about adding that functionality as a module.
that might work fine if you wanted ramdisk support after booting, but
it's certainly not going to help if you need to mount a
filesystem-format initrd at boot time, is it? i'm thinking it might
be appropriate to add a note along the lines of "WARNING: if you need
this feature at boot time, you must select "Y". or am i
misunderstanding this somehow?
rday
--
========================================================================
Robert P. J. Day
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry
Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA
http://crashcourse.ca
========================================================================
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