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Hey folks, my first order of business here needs to be a huge thank you to everyone who has donated at https://paypal.me/volkerdi to help keep this project going. As most of you are already aware by now, the financal situation here at Slackware HQ has not been great for many years, including not getting any pay for the last two years and forcing me (and my family) to live very frugally while I continued to work on the project hoping I'd figure out a way to actually monitize it by the time that Slackware 15.0 is ready for release. I'm not trying to cast any blame regarding the situation. Really, I can only blame myself for not trying to build my own ship years ago when things began to not really work out. I'm still looking into sustainable funding options such as Patreon or Liberapay (or perhaps both), and I'm open to other ideas. I'm no longer in immediate danger of going broke, and I'm no longer entertaining the notion of joining my friends at the local potato chip factory in order to pay my bills. :) My family is grateful and humbled by the support we've received. Hope we'll be able to keep this project going for a long time. Also, I realize that the website lacks updates and needs attention and I will need to find some time to devote to that. I've never been much of a website designer, and the slackware.com site is basically left over from work done by former Walnut Creek / BSDi employees. I've never seen able to make much sense of the SQL backend. The interface to edit and post articles is clunky (and I'm not sure the PHP for that even works any more). When I've posted articles in recent years, I've done so by editing the main page already processed from PHP into HTML, which is pretty darn messy as I'm sure you can imagine. I tend to prioritize the distribution itself over other demands on my time - that's clearly a lot to do with how things ended up the way they did. So, I guess that's the report for now. Lots more work to do and not enough time to do it in... that part I don't see changing moving forward. :) Thanks very much again. I'll do my best to keep you all posted. - Pat a/file-5.34-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. a/kernel-firmware-20180727_b01151b-noarch-1.txz: Upgraded. a/kernel-generic-4.14.58-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. a/kernel-huge-4.14.58-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. a/kernel-modules-4.14.58-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. d/gcc-8.2.0-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. d/gcc-brig-8.2.0-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. d/gcc-g++-8.2.0-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. d/gcc-gfortran-8.2.0-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. d/gcc-gnat-8.2.0-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. d/gcc-go-8.2.0-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. d/gcc-objc-8.2.0-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. d/kernel-headers-4.14.58-x86-1.txz: Upgraded. d/libtool-2.4.6-x86_64-9.txz: Rebuilt. Recompiled to update embedded GCC version number. k/kernel-source-4.14.58-noarch-1.txz: Upgraded. CRASH_DUMP n -> y KEXEC n -> y +KEXEC_JUMP y +PROC_VMCORE y l/babl-0.1.54-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. l/gegl-0.4.6-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. l/libart_lgpl-2.3.21-x86_64-2.txz: Removed. This actually hasn't been needed by any Slackware package since koffice in KDE3, and this particular version won't work with the Trinity Desktop Environment, which is essentially a fork of KDE 3.5 updated to compile and run with modern libraries and development tools. I can't see much point in keeping it around. Thanks to _gin. n/NetworkManager-1.12.2-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. n/dhcpcd-7.0.7-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. x/libinput-1.11.3-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. extra/tigervnc/tigervnc-1.9.0-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. isolinux/initrd.img: Rebuilt. kernels/*: Upgraded. usb-and-pxe-installers/usbboot.img: Rebuilt.
99 lines
3.5 KiB
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99 lines
3.5 KiB
Text
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Slackware initrd mini HOWTO
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by Patrick Volkerding, volkerdi@slackware.com
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Fri Jul 27 07:10:18 UTC 2018
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This document describes how to create and install an initrd, which may be
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required to use the 4.x kernel. Also see "man mkinitrd".
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1. What is an initrd?
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2. Why to I need an initrd?
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3. How do I build the initrd?
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4. Now that I've built an initrd, how do I use it?
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1. What is an initrd?
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Initrd stands for "initial ramdisk". An initial ramdisk is a very small
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Linux filesystem that is loaded into RAM and mounted as the kernel boots,
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and before the main root filesystem is mounted.
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2. Why do I need an initrd?
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The usual reason to use an initrd is because you need to load kernel
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modules before mounting the root partition. Usually these modules are
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required to support the filesystem used by the root partition (ext3, ext4,
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btrfs, xfs), or perhaps the controller that the hard drive is attached
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to (SCSI, RAID, etc). Essentially, there are so many different options
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available in modern Linux kernels that it isn't practical to try to ship
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many different kernels to try to cover everyone's needs. It's a lot more
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flexible to ship a generic kernel and a set of kernel modules for it.
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3. How do I build the initrd?
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The easiest way to make the initrd is to use the mkinitrd script included
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in Slackware's mkinitrd package. We'll walk through the process of
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upgrading to the generic 4.14.58 Linux kernel using the packages
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found in Slackware's slackware/a/ directory.
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First, make sure the kernel, kernel modules, and mkinitrd package are
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installed (the current version numbers might be a little different, so
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this is just an example):
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installpkg kernel-generic-4.14.58-x86_64-1.txz
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installpkg kernel-modules-4.14.58-x86_64-1.txz
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installpkg mkinitrd-1.4.11-x86_64-8.txz
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Change into the /boot directory:
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cd /boot
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Now you'll want to run "mkinitrd". I'm using ext4 for my root filesystem,
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and since the disk controller requires no special support the ext4 module
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will be the only one I need to load:
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mkinitrd -c -k 4.14.58 -m ext4
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This should do two things. First, it will create a directory
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/boot/initrd-tree containing the initrd's filesystem. Then it will
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create an initrd (/boot/initrd.gz) from this tree. If you wanted to,
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you could make some additional changes in /boot/initrd-tree/ and
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then run mkinitrd again without options to rebuild the image. That's
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optional, though, and only advanced users will need to think about that.
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Here's another example: Build an initrd image using Linux 4.14.58
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kernel modules for a system with an ext4 root partition on /dev/sdb3:
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mkinitrd -c -k 4.14.58 -m ext4 -f ext4 -r /dev/sdb3
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4. Now that I've built an initrd, how do I use it?
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Now that you've got an initrd (/boot/initrd.gz), you'll want to load
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it along with the kernel at boot time. If you use LILO for your boot
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loader you'll need to edit /etc/lilo.conf and add a line to load the
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initrd. Here's an example section of lilo.conf showing how this is
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done:
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# Linux bootable partition config begins
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image = /boot/vmlinuz-generic
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initrd = /boot/initrd.gz
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root = /dev/sda6
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label = Slackware
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read-only
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# Linux bootable partition config ends
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The initrd is loaded by the "initrd = /boot/initrd.gz" line.
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Just add the line right below the line for the kernel image you use.
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Save the file, and then run LILO again ('lilo' at the command line).
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You'll need to run lilo every time you edit lilo.conf or rebuild the
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initrd.
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Other bootloaders such as syslinux also support the use of an initrd.
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See the documentation for those programs for details on using an
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initrd with them.
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---------
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Have fun!
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