The "initrd" (Init Ram-Disk) File

• Sometimes, we need to pack modules that are needed before the kernel can access the disk partitions, into the 'initrd' file.
• To do this, we need to use the 'mkinitrd' command:

  mkinitrd /boot/initrd-2.4.20-8.img 2.4.20-8

  This creates an initrd file named '/boot/initrd-2.4.20-8.img', containing hard-disk and file-system related modules, for kernel version 2.4.20-8.
• The initrd command uses the modules installed under /lib/modules/, so it must be executed after make modules_install.

Originally written by guy keren