Re: initrd

[Stuart Prescott <debian@nanonanonano.net>]

Hi Wille,

This answer comes from my vague memories of converting 2.4 systems to
ext3 (I'm now using a 2.6 kernel without an initrd so that I can suspend
to disk without problems!)

There is an EXT3-debian howto that I followed for this which was quite
nice:

	http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/reference/ch-kernel.en.html

Look at section 7.2.4.


The 3 steps that are necessary are as follows....


#1.  /etc/mkinitrd/modules should contain:

jdb
ext2
ext3

#2.  then the mkinitrd command is used to make the actual initrd. The
correct command will actually be called from the Debian kernel package's
post-inst script, so you could just tell your favourite package
management program to reinstall the kernel:

# apt-get install --reinstall kernel-image-2.4.27-1-386

or you could do it the slightly longer way:

# mkinitrd -o /boot/initrd.img-2.4.27-1-386 /lib/modules/2.4.27-1-386
# ln -sf /boot/initrd.img-2.4.27-1-386 /initrd 



#3.  finally, you need to tell grub/lilo to use the initrd. 

e.g. for lilo 

image=/vmlinuz
        label=Linux
        initrd=/initrd
        read-only


Of course all of my commands above (e.g. ln -sf ... /initrd) should be
adapted to suit your local installation and the conventions you have for
dealing with previous kernel images.



good luck!
Stuart