On Tue, 21 Mar 2006 13:17:20 +0000, Paulo da Silva wrote:

> Sumo Wrestler (or just ate too much) wrote:
> ...
>
>>
>> It would be interesting if I could peek around in the initrd image by
>> loop-mounting it, but I don't know what filesystem type is used for it.
>>
>
> I can help you about this ...
> About debian initrd images you can extract its contenta as follow:
>
> gzip -dc initrd.img > initrd
> cpio -idv < initrd
>
> or
>
> gzip -dc initrd.img | cpio -idv
>

gzip said "not in gzip format".


> Unfortunately, when I tryed to reverse these steps (see info cpio)
> I did not get a working image. May be I made some mistake or I
> should have used mkinitrd.
> Anyway I did not take a sgnificant amount of time
> hacking this thing ...
>
> An approach to follow is to look at the way debian utils build
> the image, where they get its contents from.
>
> If you have time to spend with this and reach any conclusion, I would
> be pleased to hear from you.
>
> Regards
> Paulo

Since my system is working properly, I think I'll leave initrd alone. I
don't need to lose any more hair over this

Sumo Wrestler (or just ate too much) wrote:
....

>>About debian initrd images you can extract its contents as follows:
>>
>>gzip -dc initrd.img > initrd
>>cpio -idv < initrd
>>
>>or
>>
>>gzip -dc initrd.img | cpio -idv
>>
>
>
> gzip said "not in gzip format".
>
You told me you are using stable. ... may be it is in another
format ... may be cramfs.

Try
mount -t cramfs initrd.img some_dir -o loop

Be sure you have cramfs module or compiled into your kernel.

If it does not work, try
file initrd.img
to see what kind of file it is ...
....
>
> Since my system is working properly, I think I'll leave initrd alone. I
> don't need to lose any more hair over this
>
My problem is to know if it is worthwhile to loose hair changing to
debian when simple things like this do not work :-)

Is only this or what comes next?

On Tue, 21 Mar 2006 18:06:22 +0000, Paulo da Silva wrote:

> Sumo Wrestler (or just ate too much) wrote:
> ...
>
>>>About debian initrd images you can extract its contents as follows:
>>>
>>>gzip -dc initrd.img > initrd
>>>cpio -idv < initrd
>>>
>>>or
>>>
>>>gzip -dc initrd.img | cpio -idv
>>>
>>
>>
>> gzip said "not in gzip format".
>>
> You told me you are using stable. ... may be it is in another
> format ... may be cramfs.
>
> Try
> mount -t cramfs initrd.img some_dir -o loop
>
> Be sure you have cramfs module or compiled into your kernel.
>

Thank you very much. Within seconds of reading your post, I was looking
into the initrd. I had always attempted to mount it without specifying the
filesystem type assuming that it would auto-detect it. For cramfs, it
doesn't auto-detect.

> If it does not work, try
> file initrd.img
> to see what kind of file it is ...
> ...
>>
>> Since my system is working properly, I think I'll leave initrd alone. I
>> don't need to lose any more hair over this
>>
> My problem is to know if it is worthwhile to loose hair changing to
> debian when simple things like this do not work :-)
>
> Is only this or what comes next?

Debian is certainly a hundred times more complicated than Slackware, but
it's not so bad because Debian leaves open the choice to do things a
simpler but non-Debian way.

For example, you can compile the kernel with old way, without make-kpkg
and without initrd and without devfs. If you don't like the way debian has
built a package, you can download the source and compile it yourself; you
don't even have to apply the debian patches.

Believe me, it could be much worse; we could be using Linspire 5.0 where
the development tools (gcc+make), manual pages and FAQs are not
installed by default. Or we could be using Windows where the developement
tools are proprietary, and the company has a stated purpose of placing the
world under global software slavery.

Compared to some of the alternatives, Debian, both the operating system
and the people, are positively from heaven, and that's why I donated a
little money to Debian when I bought my disks