Re: [gentoo-catalyst] How is initrd built?

["Paul Smith" <psmith@nortel.com>]

%% Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@gentoo.org> writes:

  cg> On Thu, 2005-07-07 at 09:50 -0400, Paul Smith wrote:
  >> In the new version, the initrd doesn't appear to be an ext2 filesystem
  >> anymore... it's some kind of compressed cpio file?!?!  Anyway, that's
  >> what "file" tells me.

  cg> It is an initramfs image.  You can work with it just like any
  cg> other cpio archive.

Well, yeah, I tried to do that, but it doesn't work.  What am I doing
wrong (I haven't used cpio for years...)

I unpack the tarball and then:

  # gzcat isolinux/gentoo.igz | cpio -tv
  drwxr-xr-x  11 root     root            0 Jul  6 20:09 .
  drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root            0 Jul  6 20:09 dev
  crw-rw----   1 root     root       5,   1 Jul  6 20:09 dev/console
  crw-rw----   1 root     root       1,   3 Jul  6 20:09 dev/null
  drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root            0 Jul  6 20:09 bin
  drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root            0 Jul  6 20:09 etc
  -rw-r--r--   1 root     root           93 Jul  6 20:09 etc/fstab
  drwxr-xr-x   4 root     root            0 Jul  6 20:09 usr
  drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root            0 Jul  6 20:09 usr/bin
  drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root            0 Jul  6 20:09 usr/sbin
  drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root            0 Jul  6 20:09 proc
  drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root            0 Jul  6 20:09 temp
  drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root            0 Jul  6 20:09 sys
  drwxr-xr-x   3 root     root            0 Jul  6 20:09 var
  drwxr-xr-x   3 root     root            0 Jul  6 20:09 var/lock
  drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root            0 Jul  6 20:09 var/lock/dmraid
  drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root            0 Jul  6 20:09 sbin

Where's everything else?  If I actually extract the archive I get the
same results: just this small directory skeleton and no actual contents
other than the ones in bin.

The file, of course, is huge and the system does boot properly so it's
all in there somewhere, but...???


I feel dumb :-/.

-- 
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 Paul D. Smith <psmith@nortel.com>           HASMAT--HA Software Mthds & Tools
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