Re: [gentoo-user] Creating an initrd for loading...

["Benjamen R. Meyer" <bm_witness@yahoo.com>]

Florian Philipp wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-03-27 at 14:31 -0400, Benjamen R. Meyer wrote:
>> Florian Philipp wrote:
>>> On Thu, 2008-03-27 at 12:35 -0400, Benjamen R. Meyer wrote:
>>>>  How can 
>>>> I mount the initrd image to verify it has the modules, etc. and verify 
>>>> it is a valid image?
>>> There is a wiki-entry about it: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Initramfs
>> Ok, so I used zcat to decompress the image, and then cpio to extract the 
>> data to a temporary folder. (The instructions on the wiki didn't work 
>> for some reason...complaints about finding cpio and zcat complaining 
>> about arguments). Any how...
>>
>> I snooped around the extracted files and was unable to find either the 
>> qla2xxx module (or the qla2200 modules, or any modules for that matter) 
>> or the qla2200 firmware. The firmware is on the hard drive (/dev/sda1 -> 
>> /lib/firmward/qla2200_fw.bin), and so is the module - 
>> /lib/modules/2.6.24-gentoo-r3/kernel/drivers/scsi/qla2xxx/qla2xxx.ko. Is 
>> the initrd image invalid?? Or are they stored somehow in the files 
>> non-obviously?
>> How could I easily add them to the initrd image? (This is really my 
>> first time playing with initrd images...)
> They are in lib/modules. I think it should work if you just copy the
> modules to their respective folder and add their names to the respective
> file in etc/modules.

Okay, I tried this two ways:

1) touched files in /etc/modules with the module names. (Probably not 
right) - didn't work.

2) added all the files in 
/lib/modules/2.6.24-gentoo-r3/kernel/drivers/scsi and sub-directories to 
/etc/modules/scsi - didn't work. Perhaps I need to add the information 
for the firmware???

> To create a initrd new initrd, use the following command:
> find . | cpio --quiet --dereference -o -H newc | gzip -9 >/boot/initrd

Okay, used this instead of the lengthy process I was doing before:

find ./ | cpio -H newc -o > /boot/initrd.bmeyer.cpio
gzip /boot/initrd.bmeyer.cpio
mv /boot/initrd.bmeyer.cpio.gz /boot/initrd.bmeyer

Any how...still stuck. Think I'm further along..but don't know.

FYI - right after it runs 'mdev' there is a line saying it can't find 
'ls'...not sure if that is an error with mdev, or an error after mdev. 
Either way, I can't find out since the system goes unusable until I 
reboot manually (cycle power).

TIA,

Ben

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