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Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...
systems, initrd (''initial ramdisk'') is a scheme for loading a temporary root
file system In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage medium would be one lar ...
into
memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered ...
, to be used as part of the
Linux startup process The multi-stage booting process of Linux is in many ways similar to the BSD and other Unix-style boot processes, from which it derives. Booting a Linux installation involves multiple stages and software components, including firmware initializati ...
. initrd and initramfs refer to two different methods of achieving this. Both are commonly used to make preparations before the real
root In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the sur ...
file system can be mounted.


Rationale

Many
Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading on ...
s ship a single, generic
Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ...
image one that the distribution's developers create specifically to boot on a wide variety of hardware. The
device driver In computing, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton. A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabling operating systems and o ...
s for this generic kernel image are included as
loadable kernel module In computing, a loadable kernel module (LKM) is an object file that contains code to extend the running kernel, or so-called ''base kernel'', of an operating system. LKMs are typically used to add support for new hardware (as device drivers) and ...
s because statically compiling many drivers into one kernel causes the kernel image to be much larger, perhaps too large to boot on computers with limited memory, or in some cases to cause boot-time crashes or other problems due to probing for nonexistent or conflicting hardware. This static-compiled kernel approach also leaves modules in kernel memory which are no longer used or needed, and raises the problem of detecting and loading the modules necessary to mount the root file system at boot time, or for that matter, deducing where or what the root file system is. To further complicate matters, the root file system may be on a software
RAID Raid, RAID or Raids may refer to: Attack * Raid (military), a sudden attack behind the enemy's lines without the intention of holding ground * Corporate raid, a type of hostile takeover in business * Panty raid, a prankish raid by male colleg ...
volume, LVM, NFS (on diskless workstations), or on an encrypted partition. All of these require special preparations to mount. Another complication is kernel support for hibernation, which suspends the computer to disk by dumping an image of the entire contents of memory to a
swap partition In computer operating systems, memory paging is a memory management scheme by which a computer stores and retrieves data from secondary storage for use in main memory. In this scheme, the operating system retrieves data from secondary storag ...
or a regular file, then powering off. On next boot, this image has to be made accessible before it can be loaded back into memory. To avoid having to hardcode handling for so many special cases into the kernel, an initial boot stage with a temporary root file-system – now dubbed
early user space The multi-stage booting process of Linux is in many ways similar to the BSD and other Unix-style boot processes, from which it derives. Booting a Linux installation involves multiple stages and software components, including firmware initializat ...
– is used. This root file-system can contain user-space helpers which do the hardware detection, module loading and device discovery necessary to get the real root file-system mounted.


Implementation

An
image An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimensio ...
of this initial root file system (along with the kernel image) must be stored somewhere accessible by the Linux
bootloader A bootloader, also spelled as boot loader or called boot manager and bootstrap loader, is a computer program that is responsible for booting a computer. When a computer is turned off, its softwareincluding operating systems, application code, an ...
or the boot firmware of the computer. This can be the root file system itself, a
boot image A boot image is a type of disk image (a computer file containing the complete contents and structure of a storage medium). When it is transferred onto a boot device it allows the associated hardware to boot. The ''boot image'' usually includes ...
on an
optical disc In computing and optical disc recording technologies, an optical disc (OD) is a flat, usually circular disc that encodes binary data (bits) in the form of pits and lands on a special material, often aluminum, on one of its flat surfaces. ...
, a small partition on a local disk (a ''boot partition'', usually using
ext2 The ext2 or second extended file system is a file system for the Linux kernel. It was initially designed by French software developer Rémy Card as a replacement for the extended file system (ext). Having been designed according to the same p ...
or
FAT In nutrition, biology, and chemistry, fat usually means any ester of fatty acids, or a mixture of such compounds, most commonly those that occur in living beings or in food. The term often refers specifically to triglycerides (triple es ...
file systems), or a TFTP server (on systems that can boot from
Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in ...
). The bootloader will load the kernel and initial root file system image into memory and then start the kernel, passing in the memory address of the image. At the end of its boot sequence, the kernel tries to determine the format of the image from its first few blocks of data, which can lead either to the initrd or initramfs scheme. In the initrd scheme, the image may be a file system image (optionally compressed), which is made available in a special
block device In Unix-like operating systems, a device file or special file is an interface to a device driver that appears in a file system as if it were an ordinary file. There are also special files in DOS, OS/2, and Windows. These special files allow ...
() that is then mounted as the initial root file system. The driver for that file system must be compiled statically into the kernel. Many distributions originally used compressed
ext2 The ext2 or second extended file system is a file system for the Linux kernel. It was initially designed by French software developer Rémy Card as a replacement for the extended file system (ext). Having been designed according to the same p ...
file system images, while the others (including
Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of De ...
3.1) used cramfs in order to boot on memory-limited systems, since the cramfs image can be mounted in-place without requiring extra space for decompression. Once the initial root file system is up, the kernel executes as its first process; when it exits, the kernel assumes that the real root file system has been mounted and executes to begin the normal user-space boot process. In the initramfs scheme (available since the Linux kernel 2.6.13), the image may be a
cpio cpio is a general file archiver utility and its associated file format. It is primarily installed on Unix-like computer operating systems. The software utility was originally intended as a tape archiving program as part of the Programmer's Work ...
archive (optionally compressed). The archive is unpacked by the kernel into a special instance of a
tmpfs tmpfs (short for Temporary File System) is a temporary file storage paradigm implemented in many Unix-like operating systems. It is intended to appear as a mounted file system, but data is stored in volatile memory instead of a persistent stora ...
that becomes the initial root file system. This scheme has the advantage of not requiring an intermediate file system or block drivers to be compiled into the kernel. Some systems use the
dracut Dracut is a town in Middlesex County. At the 2020 census, the town's population was 32,617, making it the second most populous town in Massachusetts with an open town meeting system of governance. The town covers a total area of 21.36 square ...
package to create an initramfs image. In the initramfs scheme, the kernel executes as its first process that is not expected to exit. For some applications, initramfs can use the casper utility to create a writable environment using unionfs to overlay a persistence layer over a read-only root filesystem image. For example, overlay data can be stored on a
USB flash drive A USB flash drive (also called a thumb drive) is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. It is typically removable, rewritable and much smaller than an optical disc. Most weigh less than . Since fir ...
, while a compressed
SquashFS Squashfs is a compressed read-only file system for Linux. Squashfs compresses files, inodes and directories, and supports block sizes from 4 KiB up to 1 MiB for greater compression. Several compression algorithms are supported. Squashfs is als ...
read-only image stored on a
live CD A live CD (also live DVD, live disc, or live operating system) is a complete bootable computer installation including operating system which runs directly from a CD-ROM or similar storage device into a computer's memory, rather than loading f ...
acts as a root filesystem. Depending on which algorithms were compiled statically into it, the kernel can unpack initrd/initramfs images compressed with
gzip gzip is a file format and a software application used for file compression and decompression. The program was created by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler as a free software replacement for the compress program used in early Unix systems, and ...
, bzip2, LZMA, XZ, LZO, LZ4, and zstd.


Mount preparations

Some Linux distributions such as
Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of De ...
will generate a customized initrd image which contains only whatever is necessary to boot some particular computer, such as ATA,
SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, electrical, optical and logical interface ...
and filesystem kernel modules. These typically embed the location and type of the root file system. Other Linux distributions (such as
Fedora A fedora () is a hat with a soft brim and indented crown.Kilgour, Ruth Edwards (1958). ''A Pageant of Hats Ancient and Modern''. R. M. McBride Company. It is typically creased lengthwise down the crown and "pinched" near the front on both sides ...
and
Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: '' Desktop'', '' Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All th ...
) generate a more generic initrd image. These start only with the device name of the root file system (or its UUID) and must discover everything else at boot time. In this case, the software must perform a complex cascade of tasks to get the root file system mounted: * Any hardware drivers that the boot process depends on must be loaded. A common arrangement is to pack kernel modules for common storage devices onto the initrd and then invoke a hotplug agent to pull in modules matching the computer's detected hardware. * On systems which display a boot splash screen, the video hardware must be initialized and a user-space helper started to paint animations onto the display in lockstep with the boot process. * If the root file system is on NFS, it must then bring up the primary network interface, invoke a
DHCP The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a network management protocol used on Internet Protocol (IP) networks for automatically assigning IP addresses and other communication parameters to devices connected to the network using a cli ...
client, with which it can obtain a DHCP lease, extract the name of the NFS share and the address of the NFS server from the lease, and mount the NFS share. * If the root file system appears to be on a software RAID device, there is no way of knowing which devices the RAID volume spans; the standard MD utilities must be invoked to scan all available block devices and bring the required ones online. * If the root file system appears to be on a
logical volume In computer storage, logical volume management or LVM provides a method of allocating space on mass-storage devices that is more flexible than conventional partitioning schemes to store volumes. In particular, a volume manager can concatenate, ...
, the LVM utilities must be invoked to scan for and activate the
volume group In Linux, Logical Volume Manager (LVM) is a device mapper framework that provides logical volume management for the Linux kernel. Most modern Linux distributions are LVM-aware to the point of being able to have their root file system I ...
containing it. * If the root file system is on an encrypted block device, the software needs to invoke a helper script to prompt the user to type in a passphrase and/or insert a hardware token (such as a
smart card A smart card, chip card, or integrated circuit card (ICC or IC card) is a physical electronic authentication device, used to control access to a resource. It is typically a plastic credit card-sized card with an embedded integrated circuit (IC) c ...
or a USB security
dongle A dongle is a small piece of computer hardware that connects to a port on another device to provide it with additional functionality, or enable a pass-through to such a device that adds functionality. In computing, the term was initially synonym ...
), and then create a decryption target with the device mapper. Some distributions use an event-driven hotplug agent such as
udev udev (userspace ) is a device manager for the Linux kernel. As the successor of devfsd and hotplug, udev primarily manages device nodes in the directory. At the same time, udev also handles all user space events raised when hardware devices ...
, which invokes helper programs as hardware devices, disk partitions and storage volumes matching certain rules come online. This allows discovery to run in parallel, and to progressively cascade into arbitrary nestings of LVM, RAID or encryption to get at the root file system. When the root file system finally becomes visible, any maintenance tasks that cannot run on a mounted root file system are done, the root file system is mounted read-only, and any processes that must continue running (such as the splash screen helper and its command FIFO) are hoisted into the newly mounted root file system. The final root file system cannot simply be mounted over , since that would make the scripts and tools on the initial root file system inaccessible for any final cleanup tasks: * On an initrd, the new root is mounted at a temporary mount point and rotated into place wit
pivot_root(8)
(which was introduced specifically for this purpose). This leaves the initial root file system at a mount point (such as ) where normal boot scripts can later unmount it to free up memory held by the initrd. * On an initramfs, the initial root file system cannot be rotated away. Instead, it is simply emptied and the final root file system mounted over the top. Most initial root file systems implement or as a shell script and thus include a minimal shell (usually /bin/ash) along with some essential user-space utilities (usually the
BusyBox BusyBox is a software suite that provides several Unix utilities in a single executable file. It runs in a variety of POSIX environments such as Linux, Android, and FreeBSD, although many of the tools it provides are designed to work with int ...
toolkit). To further save space, the shell, utilities and their supporting libraries are typically compiled with space optimizations enabled (such as with gcc's "-Os" flag) and linked against klibc, a minimal version of the
C library The C standard library or libc is the standard library for the C programming language, as specified in the ISO C standard. ISO/ IEC (2018). '' ISO/IEC 9899:2018(E): Programming Languages - C §7'' Starting from the original ANSI C standard, it wa ...
written specifically for this purpose.


Other uses

Installers for Linux distributions typically run entirely from an initramfs, as they must be able to host the installer interface and supporting tools before any persistent storage has been set up.
Tiny Core Linux Tiny Core Linux (TCL) is a minimal Linux kernel based operating system focusing on providing a base system using BusyBox and FLTK. It was developed by Robert Shingledecker, who was previously the lead developer of Damn Small Linux. The distribu ...
and
Puppy Linux Puppy Linux is an operating system and family of light-weight Linux distributions that focus on ease of use and minimal memory footprint. The entire system can be run from random-access memory (RAM) with current versions generally taking up abou ...
can run entirely from initrd.


Similarities in other operating systems

Since Windows Vista, Windows can boot from a WIM disk image file, for which the file format is published; it is similar to the ZIP format except that it supports hard links, deduplicated chunks, and uses chunk-by-chunk compression. In this case, the whole WIM is initially loaded into RAM, followed by the kernel initialisation. Next, the loaded WIM is available as a SystemRoot with an assigned drive letter. The Windows installer uses this so it boots from BOOT.WIM, and then uses INSTALL.WIM as the collection of the Windows files to be installed. Also,
Windows Preinstallation Environment Windows Preinstallation Environment (also known as Windows PE and WinPE) is a lightweight version of Windows used for the deployment of PCs, workstations, and servers, or troubleshooting an operating system while it is offline. It is intended t ...
(Windows PE) uses the same, being a base for separate-boot versions of some antivirus and backup/disaster recovery software. It is also possible to install Windows so that it will always boot from a WIM or VHD file placed on a physical drive. However, this is rarely used since the Windows boot loader is capable of loading the .sys files for boot-time kernel modules itself, which is the task that requires initrd in Linux.


See also

*
dracut Dracut is a town in Middlesex County. At the 2020 census, the town's population was 32,617, making it the second most populous town in Massachusetts with an open town meeting system of governance. The town covers a total area of 21.36 square ...
*
Linux startup process The multi-stage booting process of Linux is in many ways similar to the BSD and other Unix-style boot processes, from which it derives. Booting a Linux installation involves multiple stages and software components, including firmware initializati ...
*
List of Linux distributions that run from RAM This is a list of Linux distributions that can be run entirely from a computer's RAM, meaning that once the OS has been loaded to the RAM, the media it was loaded from can be completely removed, and the distribution will run the PC through t ...

EFISTUB booting allows EFI firmware to load a Linux kernel
(Arch Linux Wiki)


References


External links


Debian initramfs-tools

Detailed comparison
of initrd-generating toolkits

on early userspace support *

{{Linux kernel Linux kernel