Steve Litt:
> On Fri, 16 Nov 2018 20:01:30 +0000
> Simon Hobson <linux@???> wrote:
> > > (2) What is initramfs good for? Linux used to work just fine
> > > without it.

Still does. I guess initrd is good when you have unknown hardware,
and thus good to use for a distribution.

> > Yes, I remember the days of having to have either a) a huge kernel
> > with everything including the kitchen sink linked in,

You don't need everything compiled in, just thoose things needed for
booting. The rest could just as well be compiled as modules.

> or b) having to
> > relink the kernel when the hardware changes.
> Let's say your kernel has the ext4 driver mounted, and your /bin
> directory contains statically compiled mount command, some sort of
> static rude editor, and maybe a few other commands. Assuming your other
> partitions are ext4, just mount them, and the second you do, you have
> all necessary software and drivers to manage all your hardware.
>
> Obviously this is for relatively simple cases. If you're running LVM
> with RAID and encryption, yeah, you're better off with an initramfs.
> But for the typical simple computer, your system would probably be
> simpler and boot faster if you booted direct to disk.

My guess that for most one disk systems you only need the scsi disk
driver and AHCI.

And today you need a little fat partition. You could just as well
throw in a little ext4 partition, there no shortage of partitions with
gpt compared to mbr; and for that little ext4 partition you can use
it as rootfs or have it call pivot_root, there is basically no need
to have the "initrd" as a binary blob unless you are netbooting.

Regards,
/Karl Hammar

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