Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote: >> I'm not certain about this, but I don't think you are right. >> You are certainly wrong about the kernel, >> which just comes with the kernel RPM. >> But I think you are also wrong about initrd too - >> that comes with the kernel RPM too, IIRC. >> I don't think when a new kernel is installed mkinitrd is run. >> > No, the initrd is generated as part of the kernel install scripts. > It does not come with the kernel. This is because it has to match > the hardware on your system. The initrd file on my laptop with a > SATA drive is different from the one for my server with SCSI drives > witch is different from the desktop with PATA drives witch is > different from the one on my bootable USB drive. They are all > created by mkinitrd when you install the kernel. Otherwise the > initrd file would have to contain all the modules for disk access, > or they would have to be built into the kernel. > > You can verify this by looking at the install scripts in the kernel > package. You can also check the dates on the kernel, and on the > initrd image file. The kernel date/time will be earlier then the > time/date on the initrd image. You can also run "rpm -Vv <kernel > rpm> | grep /boot" - it will not try to verify the initrd file. You > can run it without piping through the grep command, but then it list > all the modules that come with the kernel too. I see that you are right. What misled me is that there _is_ an initrd in the kernel rpm: [tim@elizabeth ~]$ rpm -ql kernel-2.6.22.5-76.fc7 | grep initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.22.5-76.fc7.img I guess this is used if mkinitrd fails for some reason. Actually, the old kernels and modules I have from pre-SATA Fedora do run under Fedora-7, I'm not sure why. (I upgraded from FC-5 on one machine, so the old kernels are there.)
