I am totally lost here

[Net Llama!]

On Thu, 5 Sep 2002, Matthew Carpenter wrote:
> I just built 2.4.19 (using the COL311 2.4.13 SPEC file as a guide) and have run up against something I don't understand:
>
> When do/don't you need an initrd?  Is this a Kernel config thing or is this something else?  I noticed that COL and SuSE don't boot unless I give them a valid initrd-2.4.1? file listed in Grub.  Can anyone explain this "initial RAMDisk?" (I'm assuming that's what it means)

Technically, you never needn an initrd, if you compile support for
whatever you'd otherwise put in the initrd, into the kernel.  The prime
example is SCSI stuff, where if you have / on a SCSI drive, you need to
compile *ALL* SCSI support into the kernel, or place it in the initrd.  I
just compile it into the kernel, since its one less step in the kernel
build process if i dont' have to putz around with initrds.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lonni J Friedman				netllama at linux-sxs.org
Linux Step-by-step & TyGeMo		     http://netllama.ipfox.com