On Wednesday 21 February 2007, pat wrote about '[gentoo-user] ramfs - is it necessary ???': > And if it is necessary where I can find good documentation > (samples, explanation, etc.). Pretty much all of the documenation on "early userspace" is in the kernel tree. You might even want to emerge the kernel with the 'doc' use flag, to get full (HTML?) documentation, although some of it is in simple plain text (rather than docbook) and available w/o that flag. > And next question is: hat is difference between ramfs and initrd ??? Is > it the same thing or not ... ??? initrd is the old way. A compressed (usually ext2) filesystem used to load kernel modules, or otherwise initialize things before mounting the root filesystem. initramfs is the new way. A compressed series of cpio archives (with some special treatment) for the same purpose. Both use ram-backed block devices. initrd doesn't need ramfs or tmpfs. I think an initramfs can use either, but it might require ramfs. An initramfs can be compiled into the kernel, either can be a separate file loaded by grub/lilo/xen. ramfs is a fixed-size ram-backed file system. tmpfs is a newer, better way to do this. It has a maximum size (which can be changed by a remount) but will only allocate enough ram to hold what is currently placed on the filesystem. -- Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. ,= ,-_-. =. bss03@volumehost.net ((_/)o o(\_)) ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy `-'(. .)`-' http://iguanasuicide.org/ \_/ New GPG Key! Old key expires 2007-03-25. Upgrade NOW!