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Re: How to make a initrd with the exact modules?



Robin Bultot wrote:
Hi,

I'v been busy installing my debian 'sarge' kernel 2.6.9 for weeks now.
My problem is my harddisk. I have a maxtor SATA disk with two partitions
formatted as NTFS. The other two are formatted ext3 and one swap.

When I recompile my kernel I HAVE to do that with "make-kpkg --initrd"
so it makes a initial ramdisk. The only condition is that I compile my
ext3-drivers and sata-drivers as Module. I think that when I compile
them as a module my initrd uses the modules in the ramdisk. Is this true?


Debian's mkinitrd tries to guess the list of modules to load
at boot time using the currently running configuration. I.e.
_if_ your currently mounted root partition is managed by a
sata module, then this module is loaded at boot time for the
new initrd.img, too.

What I want to know is how to make my own initrd with the drivers for
sata, ext3 and ntfs(rw). I want to mount my NTFS partition at boot so I
think I have to put them in my initrd.


You can extend the list of modules to load in /etc/mkinitrd/modules.
Then you can build an initrd.img without make-kpkg (for testing)
using

	mkinitrd -o /boot/initrd.img-test  2.6.10

Next configure Lilo or Grub.


But:

initrd.img should be used just to make your root partition
available (and maybe to load some keyboard or other basic
drivers). Once the root filesystem is mounted the init
script on the initrd.img passes the boot control to it.
This root filesystem is much easier to configure.

If you don't plan to make one of your ntfs partitions the
root filesystem (which I would not recommend), then it
should be sufficient to add these partitions to /etc/fstab
on the root partition. Then they will be loaded at boot
time after the startup code in initrd.img has been done.


Good luck

Harri

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