Initramfs init

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Revision as of 19:43, 8 January 2023 by WhyNotHugo (talk | contribs) (Delete list of options. It's outdated and nobody's gonna keep this in sync. Check the man page instead.)
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(Last edited by WhyNotHugo on 8 Jan 2023.)

mkinitfs is a tool to create initramfs images. Initramfs images are small images which contain a small filesystem with everything required to boot Alpine. For example, when booting a setup with full disk encryption, the initramfs contains the binaries required to prompt for a password and mount the encrypted disk.

Usage

Under a running alpine machine, the following command can be used if for some reason the initramfs has not been created properly for a new kernel.

mkinitfs -c /etc/mkinitfs/mkinitfs.conf -b / <kernelvers>

The script is located in /sbin/ and is created with ash. It expects /lib/modules to be populated with the <kernelvers> listed. For variations on this command (e.g. for chroot) Search "mkinitfs".

initramfs init cmdline options (work in progress)

In addition to the kernel boot parameters are a number of parameters that the init script understands. These are documented in the mkinitfs-bootparam(7) man page.

Although you may specify your own init script when building an initramfs, these parameters allow for extensive control over the initial startup of an Alpine Linux system.