Re: [DSA-403-1] Kernel update?

["Benedict Verheyen" <linux4bene@pandora.be>]

>Bill Moseley wrote:
> So is the purpose of initrd to have a small kernel but be able to load
> whatever modules might be needed for the currently running hardware?
>
> If so I often wonder why that's needed -- that is, why not just build
> a kernel with everything compiled in?  If, say, installing from CD
> then size of the kernel isn't critical (not to mention that the
> modules take up space, too), and most machines have quite a bit of
> RAM these days, so I would not think that an issue either.  Which
> brings me back to the point that maybe I don't really understand the
> need for initrd...

If you have LVM and your root is also on LVM, then you need
to have an initrd. I did it that way, keeping 1 boot partition in ext2.
Even though i had LVM support compiled into the kernel, it wouldn't
work unless i had a initrd made with lvmcreate_initrd.

Otherwise, i think it's probably used to keep the kernel image size
down by using modules. And when you use modules you may run into
the situation where the kernel needs a module that for instance is on
a reiserfs partition but reiserfs isn't compiled in the kernel so it
doesn't
know how to read that partition and so it fails to load the module.

Regards,
Benedict