Re: initrd sizes mushroomed several months ago
On Fri, Feb 03, 2023 at 06:45:14PM -0600, David Wright wrote:
> It's useful, as seen in my post, to skip past the early archive in
> order to see how the main archive has been compressed.
If you want to see the contents of the *second* archive in the initrd,
you have to call cpio a second time.
unicorn:~$ { cpio -it ; echo ========== ; zcat | cpio -it | head; } < /boot/initrd.img-5.10.0-21-amd64
kernel
kernel/x86
kernel/x86/microcode
kernel/x86/microcode/.enuineIntel.align.0123456789abc
kernel/x86/microcode/GenuineIntel.bin
9794 blocks
==========
.
bin
conf
conf/arch.conf
conf/conf.d
conf/conf.d/resume
conf/initramfs.conf
etc
etc/fstab
etc/ld.so.cache
As it turns out, the second archive in that initrd file is compressed.
Omitting the "zcat |" causes a *massive* slew of error messages containing
binary data.
Or, of course, you could use lsinitramfs which is actually designed to
read these things.
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