[plug] initrd confusion!

[Russell Steicke]

On Fri, Apr 16, 2004 at 11:28:12AM +0800, Denis Brown wrote:
> Dear PLUG list members,
> 
> I have a situation where I need to have a modularised kernel, specifically 
> with the RAID device as a module.   The reason for this, is to allow the 
> low level drive monitoring software to work.   I have been reading up on 
> initrd but find that I am confused, as follows...
> 
> 0. There are no IDE or ATA devices in this box, only SCSI in hardware RAID.
> 1. The RAID driver will be compiled into the kernel as a module.   So the 
> kernel will not be able to see any file systems until the module is loaded.
> 2. The module will be inaccessible to the kernel because, well, it cannot 
> be loaded!
> 3. Initrd would seem to offer help.   Initrd basically, if I understand it 
> correctly, will load a kernel into ramdisk, load the required RAID driver 
> module and then switch over to the "real" file system.

Sort of.  My understanding is this:

- lilo or grub loads the kernel into memory, then loads the initrd into
  memory as a ramdisk.

- control passes to the kernel, with the ramdisk as the root filesystem.

- The kernel can insmod modules from the ramdisk.  Your raid and scsi
  drivers must be present in the ramdisk.  This is the key point, that
  the modules can be loaded _out of RAM_, before the disk is available.

- Shortly after, the real root filesystem (off your raid) is mounted on
  a temporary mount point, then pivot_root is called to "rotate" the
  mount points so that your real root filesystem ends up at /.  See
  pivot_root(8) and pivot_root(2).


You should be able to have a peek inside the initrd with something like
this:

  mount -t cramfs -o ro,loop /boot/initrd.img-2.4.24 /mnt/tmp

Then have a look at /mnt/tmp/sbin/init, where the latter parts of this
magic are written down for us.


-- 
Russell Steicke

-- Fortune says:
Dear Lord:
	I just want *one* one-armed manager so I never have to hear "On
the other hand", again.