Re: Announce: initrd-tftp 0.1

[Alex Holden]

On Sat, 8 Jan 2000, Alan Cox wrote:
> > isn't one), but do have the ability to load and execute a block of code
> > (the kernel) from the network. This patch allows the kernel, once it's
> Then they can support an initrd. You can have the initrd compiled into or
> appended to the kernel image. 

That means you have to write a mini boot loader which knows how to do that
for each architecture (initrd-tftp is architecture independant), and 
you're subject to whatever arbitrary limits in image size the firmware
might have. It also means having to rebuild the kernel image file whenever
you make a modification to the contents of the initrd. It's also needs
more memory because you have to load the initrd into the initrd space at
boot and then decompress/copy it into the ramdisk, rather than loading it
directly into the ramdisk (which would matter if you had a 6MB RAM disk on
an 8MB machine or something like a lot of embedded systems).

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: Alex Holden (M1CJD)- Caver, Programmer, Land Rover nut, Radio Ham :
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