Create your own initial ram disk (initrd)

Uditha Atukorala

Revision History

Revision 1.0 2008-03-28 Uditha Atukorala

Initial Release

Revision 1.1 2008-03-31 Uditha Atukorala

Changed the page layout to be more printer-friendly
Table of Contents

0. LEGAL INFORMATION ............................................................................................................................................3

0.1 COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE .........................................................................................................................................3
0.2. DISCLAIMER .............................................................................................................................................................3
1. WHAT IS INITRD?......................................................................................................................................................4
2. WHY CREATE AN INITRD?.....................................................................................................................................5
3. MODIFYING THE DEBIAN INITRD .......................................................................................................................6
3.1. WHAT YOU NEED ......................................................................................................................................................6
3.2. EXTRACTING THE INITRD..........................................................................................................................................6
3.3. DO THE CHANGES .....................................................................................................................................................7
3.4. MAKE THE CUSTOM INITRD IMAGE ...........................................................................................................................8
3.5. TEST THE NEW INITRD ..............................................................................................................................................8
3.6. TROUBLESHOOTING..................................................................................................................................................8
4. CREATE A NEW INITRD FROM SCRATCH.......................................................................................................10
4.1. PREPARE THE WORKSPACE .....................................................................................................................................10
4.2. POPULATE THE DIRECTORY STRUCTURE .................................................................................................................10
4.3. SOFTWARE FOR THE INITRD ....................................................................................................................................10
4.4. MAKE DEVICE NODES .............................................................................................................................................11
4.5. FINALISE ................................................................................................................................................................11
4.6. TEST THE NEW INITRD ............................................................................................................................................12
APPENDIX A. GNU FREE DOCUMENTATION LICENSE....................................................................................13
A.0. PREAMBLE.........................................................................................................................................................13
A.1. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS..............................................................................................................13
A.2. VERBATIM COPYING.......................................................................................................................................14
A.3. COPYING IN QUANTITY ..................................................................................................................................14
A.4 MODIFICATIONS................................................................................................................................................15
A.5. COMBINING DOCUMENTS..............................................................................................................................16
A.6. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS....................................................................................................................17
A.7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS ..........................................................................................17
A.8. TRANSLATION ..................................................................................................................................................17
A.9. TERMINATION ..................................................................................................................................................17
A.10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE ......................................................................................................17
ADDENDUM: HOW TO USE THIS LICENSE FOR YOUR DOCUMENTS .............................................................................18

2
Chapter 0. Legal information

0. Legal information
0.1 Copyright and License

This document, Create your own initial ram disk (initrd), is copyright (c) 2008 by Uditha Atukorala.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free
Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the
section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

0.2. Disclaimer
This documentation is provided as−is with no warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including,
but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. Use the
concepts, examples and information at your own risk. The author(s) do not take any responsibility for
damages that may arise from the use of this document.

All copyrights are held by their respective owners, unless specifically noted otherwise. Use of a term in this
document should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark. Naming of
particular products or brands should not be seen as endorsements.

3
Chapter 1. What is initrd?

1. What is initrd?
Initial Ram Disk or initrd is a compressed file system which is uncompressed and loaded to the memory by
the boot loader. When the kernel is booting it treats this initial file system as the root file system and
executes the first program /linuxrc. (Note: for Debian kernels the default is /init) This program then mounts
the actual file system and passes the control to it and ideally un-mounting the initrd and freeing memory.

Initial ram disk is a way of resolving the chicken and egg dilemma for the kernel. Imagine you have the
actual root file system in a device which requires the kernel to use additional modules, but in order to load
these modules the kernel has to access the file system. Thus the initrd could contain all the required modules
and mount the actual file system and then pass over the control.

4
Chapter 2. Why create an initrd?

2. Why create an initrd?

At a glance all the distributions come with an initrd (if they need one) and most of the time provides tools to
upgrade it. So why go through all the trouble of making a custom initrd? Well, the answer is simple. You
can't get the stock initrd to do what you want in the way you want, especially if you are building a system of
your own. And that’s when you want to tweak the stock initrd or create your own.

5
Chapter 3. Modifying the Debian initrd

3. Modifying the Debian initrd

As a start, we’ll try modifying a stock initrd. I chose Debian since I’m familiar with it but you could use your
own. Obviously the steps won’t be the same, but once you get the basics you’ll be able to continue on your
own. Try looking into the troubleshooting section if you face any difficulties.

3.1. What you need

All you need is a Linux System to do your work and a stock initrd.
I chose the initrd from the Debian Etch business-card installation disk since it is simple and small (not the
smallest) in size. You can always use your system initrd but remember not to modify the original and always
keep a copy of the original.

3.2. Extracting the initrd

Download the business card iso image from Debian1 and mount it.

# Create the folder to mount

mkdir –p /mnt/isoimage/

# Mount the iso image

mount -o loop -t iso9660 debian-40r2-i386-businesscard.iso /mnt/isoimage/

It is a good idea to have a clean working directory so you know what you are doing at the moment and it is
easier to manage. I setup my working directory as $HOME/WorkBench

Now let’s copy the initrd from Debian iso image. But first we need to find where the initrd image is. You
could find the initrd image in /boot in a Linux System so hoping that the iso image has the same structure
we’ll look in the mounted image structure.

$ ls –l /mnt/isoimage/

Unfortunately the boot folder is not there, but we could find a folder named ‘isolinux’. Since we find this
folder we could conclude the iso image uses the ISOLINUX2 boot system.

So we look inside isolinux folder,

$ ls –l /mnt/isoimage/isolinux

Now we have the isolinux.cfg file which is used to store ISOLINUX configuration.

$ less /mnt/isoimage/isolinux/isolinux.cfg

Try to find something like

LABEL install
kernel /install.386/vmlinuz
append vga=normal initrd=/install.386/initrd.gz –

1
URL: http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/#businesscard-stable
2
URL: http://syslinux.zytor.com/iso.php
6
Chapter 3. Modifying the Debian initrd

There we are; the initrd image is in install.386 folder. Copy it to your work bench.

$ cp /mnt/isoimage/isolinux/install.386/initrd.gz $HOME/WorkBench
$ cd $HOME/WorkBench

Extract the initrd image,

$ zcat initrd.gz | cpio –i

Now you should have a directory structure which is very similar to a root file system extracted to your
working directory. Browse through it and try to find something interesting.

3.3. Do the changes

What we should start editing is the initial script or the program executed by the kernel, which is linuxrc or
init in the case of Debian.

Just have a glance at the existing init script.

$ less init

#!/bin/sh -e
# used for initramfs
export PATH
. /lib/debian-installer/init-debug
debugshell "just booted"

mount /proc
if [ -x /sbin/udevd ]; then
/lib/debian-installer/init-udev-devices
else
mount /dev
mount /dev/pts
fi
init='busybox init'
for i in $(cat /proc/cmdline); do
case $i in
init=*)
init=${i#init=}
;;
esac
done
debugshell "before init"
exec $init

It isn’t so hard to understand, is it now?

It’ll be a good idea to trace the execution of the stock init script just to have an understanding of how it
works. Especially if you trace this init script you’ll get the understanding of how the Debian installer works.

Anyway, back to our work…

Let’s create our own init script, so we’ll be able to execute basic shell commands.

Debian initrd comes with BusyBox packed into it, so let’s use advantage of it and it’s build in ash shell. First
we need to mount the /proc and /sys file systems and then give the ash prompt. Edit the init script so that it’ll
be similar to the one below and don’t hesitate to add your own code and your own greeting.

7
Chapter 3. Modifying the Debian initrd

init script

#!/bin/ash
mount -t proc /proc /proc
mount -t sysfs none /sys
echo
echo "initrd is running"
echo "Using BusyBox..."
echo
exec /bin/ash --login

Well, that’s all for our simple init script. Now it’s time to make our custom initrd.

3.4. Make the custom initrd image

First move or delete the stock initrd.gz image because we don’t want that in our new initrd image.

$ rm initrd.gz

Now compress and create our initrd image.

$ find . | cpio -o -H newc | gzip > ../initrd.img

3.5. Test the new initrd

Copy our new initrd image to the /boot folder,

# cp $HOME/initrd.img /boot
Note: You might have to be in root mode.

Edit your boot loader to load the new initrd and it’s always a good idea to add a new entry with the new
initrd rather than editing the existing entries.

I added the following entry to my GRUB boot loader,

# nano /boot/grub/menu.lst

title Linux [New initrd]

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-6-686
initrd /boot/initrd.img

Do a reboot and select our new entry while booting. After booting you should get the BusyBox ash prompt
and should be able to enter simple commands.

3.6. Troubleshooting
If you are not using a Debian system then you might face some problems. In this section I try to highlight
some of the things that you might face.

First thing would be having problems with extracting the stock initrd image. The initrd image I used and all
the other Debian initrd images (I haven’t tested old Debian initrds so this could not be the case with the old

8
Chapter 3. Modifying the Debian initrd

ones) are compressed using cpio3 archive. But other initrd images could have some other compression such
as gzip.

So try uncompressing using gzip and mount in a loop device.

# mkdir -p /mnt/initrd
# gunzip initrd.img.gz
# mount -t ext -o loop initrd.img /mnt/initrd

Note that the initrd image had the extension .img.gz this could give a hint that it’s compressed using gzip.

If you uncompress a gzip image then it’s probably best to compress it back using gzip because you kernel
might not recognize cramfs4 file system (file system used in cpio archives).

# umount /mnt/initrd
# gzip –c initrd.img

For any reason if you need to recreate the stock initrd you could use this command on a Debian system.

# dpkg-reconfigure linux-image-`uname -r`

For mounting a cramfs you could try this method as well5,

# mkdir -p /mnt/initrd
# mount -t cramfs initrd.img /mnt/initrd -o loop

3
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpio
4
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cramfs
5
Reference: http://kernel-handbook.alioth.debian.org/ch-initramfs.html
9
Chapter 4. Create a new initrd from scratch

4. Create a new initrd from scratch

Initial Ram Disk is a root file system and it is no different to any other Linux root file system apart from the
size. Obviously reduced size means lesser functionality but we can pack all what we need into our initrd if
selected carefully. After all, a fully functional Linux system can be packed into a set of two 1.44MB floppy
disks6.

4.1. Prepare the workspace

We’ll start by creating a new folder to contain our initrd file system.

$ mkdir $HOME/WorkBench/initfs
$ cd $HOME/WorkBench/initfs

4.2. Populate the directory structure

Now let’s populate the directory structure,
$ mkdir {bin,sys,dev,proc,etc,lib}

4.3. Software for the initrd

We need to have some software to provide the functions we need. I’m using BusyBox7 since it is small in
size and packed with commonly used commands. You can either compile BusyBox from source or get it
from your Linux system if it is there or get your own software in your initrd. The choice is up to you.

I’m going to use the BusyBox which shipped with my Debian Linux System. If you are having thoughts of
compiling your own selection of programs it would be a good idea to use a static compile so you don’t have
to worry about the dynamic libraries. But if you really insist on using dynamic libraries you could try
installing them to your initfs directory.

$ make PREFIX=$HOME/WorkBench/initfs install

Anyway as I’ve mentioned earlier the choice is up to you and don’t hesitate to try new things.

As for my method what I should do is to copy BusyBox to my initfs.

# BusyBox
$ cp /bin/busybox $HOME/WorkBench/initfs/bin

# Dynamic Libraries
$ pushd $HOME/WorkBench/initfs/lib
$ cp /lib/libc.so.6 .
$ cp /lib/libdl.so.2 .
$ cp /lib/ld-linux.so.2 .
$ cp /lib/libcrypt.so.1 .
$ cp /lib/libm.so.6 .
$ popd

Note: lib files required by BusyBox may vary depending on your BusyBox compilation. You can use $ ldd
/bin/busybux to find out the library dependencies for your BusyBox.

And we need to create some sym-links to get the BusyBox working as we need.

$ pushd $HOME/WorkBench/initfs/bin
$ ln -s busybox ash

6
URLs: http://www.pocket-linux.org/, http://tldp.org/LDP/Pocket-Linux-Guide/html/
7
URL: http://www.busybox.net/
Chapter 4. Create a new initrd from scratch

$ ln -s busybox mount
$ ln -s busybox echo
$ ln -s busybox ls
$ ln -s busybox cat
$ ln -s busybox ps
$ ln -s busybox dmesg
$ ln -s busybox sysctl
$ ln -s busybox sh
$ popd

I found out that these links are really not necessary when you are using the BusyBox built-in ash shell. You
can just enter the commands and they’ll work. But if you are using a different shell like bash, you’ll have to
have these links to get things working.

4.4. Make device nodes

Now we have got all the software for our simple initrd but we need to make some device nodes for the
software to work. You can simple copy them from your Linux system or create them.

Method 1: Copy them

# cp -a /dev/console dev
# cp -a /dev/ram0 dev
# cp -a /dev/null dev
# cp -a /dev/tty1 dev
# cp -a /dev/tty2 dev

Method 2: Create them

# mknod dev/console c 5 1
# mknod dev/ram0 b 1 1
# mknod dev/null c 1 3
# mknod dev/tty1 c 4 1
# mknod dev/tty2 c 4 2

4.5. Finalise
If you have noticed we didn’t create the sbin directory when we were population the file system earlier. That
is simply because we are only going to have root login and everything will be executed as root. And that’s
why we didn’t even consider setting the appropriate privileges to the device nodes as well. So it is safe to just
link the bin and sbin directories.

$ ln -s bin sbin

We are almost there now. All there is left is to create the init (or linuxrc) script which will be executed by the
kernel as the first program. We will use the same init script as before so we could test our initrd against the
stock initrd.

init script

#!/bin/ash
mount -t proc /proc /proc
mount -t sysfs none /sys
echo
echo "initrd is running"
echo "Using BusyBox..."
echo
exec /bin/ash –login

11
Chapter 4. Create a new initrd from scratch

Have a look at the contents in our initfs folder now. It should be similar to this.

total 24
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-03-17 14:44 bin
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-03-17 14:44 dev
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 142 2008-03-17 14:44 init
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-03-17 14:44 lib
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-03-17 14:44 proc
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 2008-03-17 14:44 sbin -> bin
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-03-17 14:44 sys

Our initfs is now ready. So let’s create the compressed initrd.

$ find . | cpio -o -H newc | gzip > ../initrd-2.img

4.6. Test the new initrd

Follow the same procedure to test our newly created initrd.

# cp $HOME/WorkBench/initrd-2.img /boot
# nano /boot/grub/menu.lst

title Linux [Custom initrd]

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-6-686
initrd /boot/initrd-2.img

Reboot and select the ‘Linux [Custom initrd]’ from the boot menu and you should get to the BusyBox built-
in ash shell prompt. Key in some commands like ls, ls –l to make sure our initrd is working properly.

If you didn’t make any sym-links to BusyBox or you only made some of them, you can find out what are the
available commands by typing help on the ash prompt. Try experimenting with some of them just to make
sure that everything is working as planned.

12
Appendix A. GNU Free Documentation License

Appendix A. GNU Free Documentation License

Version 1.2, November 2002

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Appendix A. GNU Free Documentation License

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Appendix A. GNU Free Documentation License

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Appendix A. GNU Free Documentation License

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You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front-Cover Text, and a passage of up to 25 words as a
Back-Cover Text, to the end of the list of Cover Texts in the Modified Version. Only one passage of Front-
Cover Text and one of Back-Cover Text may be added by (or through arrangements made by) any one entity.
If the Document already includes a cover text for the same cover, previously added by you or by
arrangement made by the same entity you are acting on behalf of, you may not add another; but you may
replace the old one, on explicit permission from the previous publisher that added the old one.

The author(s) and publisher(s) of the Document do not by this License give permission to use their names for
publicity for or to assert or imply endorsement of any Modified Version.

A.5. COMBINING DOCUMENTS

You may combine the Document with other documents released under this License, under the terms defined
in section 4 above for modified versions, provided that you include in the combination all of the Invariant
Sections of all of the original documents, unmodified, and list them all as Invariant Sections of your
combined work in its license notice, and that you preserve all their Warranty Disclaimers.

The combined work need only contain one copy of this License, and multiple identical Invariant Sections
may be replaced with a single copy. If there are multiple Invariant Sections with the same name but different
contents, make the title of each such section unique by adding at the end of it, in parentheses, the name of the
original author or publisher of that section if known, or else a unique number. Make the same adjustment to
the section titles in the list of Invariant Sections in the license notice of the combined work.

In the combination, you must combine any sections Entitled "History" in the various original documents,
forming one section Entitled "History"; likewise combine any sections Entitled "Acknowledgements", and
any sections Entitled "Dedications". You must delete all sections Entitled "Endorsements".

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Appendix A. GNU Free Documentation License

A.6. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS

You may make a collection consisting of the Document and other documents released under this License,
and replace the individual copies of this License in the various documents with a single copy that is included
in the collection, provided that you follow the rules of this License for verbatim copying of each of the
documents in all other respects.

You may extract a single document from such a collection, and distribute it individually under this License,
provided you insert a copy of this License into the extracted document, and follow this License in all other
respects regarding verbatim copying of that document.

A.7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS

A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and independent documents or works,
in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an "aggregate" if the copyright resulting from
the compilation is not used to limit the legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the individual
works permit. When the Document is included in an aggregate, this License does not apply to the other
works in the aggregate which are not themselves derivative works of the Document.

If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these copies of the Document, then if the
Document is less than one half of the entire aggregate, the Document's Cover Texts may be placed on covers
that bracket the Document within the aggregate, or the electronic equivalent of covers if the Document is in
electronic form. Otherwise they must appear on printed covers that bracket the whole aggregate.

A.8. TRANSLATION
Translation is considered a kind of modification, so you may distribute translations of the Document under
the terms of section 4. Replacing Invariant Sections with translations requires special permission from their
copyright holders, but you may include translations of some or all Invariant Sections in addition to the
original versions of these Invariant Sections. You may include a translation of this License, and all the
license notices in the Document, and any Warranty Disclaimers, provided that you also include the original
English version of this License and the original versions of those notices and disclaimers. In case of a
disagreement between the translation and the original version of this License or a notice or disclaimer, the
original version will prevail.

If a section in the Document is Entitled "Acknowledgements", "Dedications", or "History", the requirement

(section 4) to Preserve its Title (section 1) will typically require changing the actual title.

A.9. TERMINATION
You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except as expressly provided for under
this License. Any other attempt to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Document is void, and will
automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights,
from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full
compliance.

A.10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE

The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU Free Documentation License
from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail
to address new problems or concerns. See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/.

Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the Document specifies that a
particular numbered version of this License "or any later version" applies to it, you have the option of
following the terms and conditions either of that specified version or of any later version that has been
published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the Document does not specify a version
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Appendix A. GNU Free Documentation License

number of this License, you may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software
Foundation.

ADDENDUM: How to use this License for your documents

To use this License in a document you have written, include a copy of the License in the document and put
the following copyright and license notices just after the title page:

Copyright (c) YEAR YOUR NAME.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the
terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version
published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no
Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included
in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

If you have Invariant Sections, Front-Cover Texts and Back-Cover Texts, replace the "with...Texts." line
with this:

with the Invariant Sections being LIST THEIR TITLES, with the Front-Cover
Texts being LIST, and with the Back-Cover Texts being LIST.

If you have Invariant Sections without Cover Texts, or some other combination of the three, merge those two
alternatives to suit the situation.

If your document contains nontrivial examples of program code, we recommend releasing these examples in
parallel under your choice of free software license, such as the GNU General Public License, to permit their
use in free software.

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