／var／logmarcus chiu

initrd (Initial RAM Disk) vs initramfs (Initial RAM File System)

Created on · Last Modified on

initrd (Initial Ram Disk) is a scheme for loading a temporary root file system into memory.

2 different methods of achieving this:

initrd
  • is a fixed-size block device, which requires to be ‘formatted’ by a filesystem such as ext2
  • it sits on /dev/ram0 by default
  • cannot be enlarged or shortened

initramfs
  • a cpio archive which is simply unpacked during boot to ramfs memory
  • this memory is of dynamic size and thus can be shortened or enlarged as needed

Subpages