Select the THREE true statements about the initramfs.
LPIC-1 Exam 101-500, objective 101. System architecture medium
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The options
Choose 3.
Correct The boot loader loads it into memory together with the kernel.
True. The loader hands the kernel both the kernel image and the initramfs archive, which is why neither has to be read from the root filesystem.
Correct It contains the modules and tools needed to make the real root filesystem reachable.
True. Storage controller drivers, device-mapper and LVM, RAID assembly and LUKS unlocking all belong there when the root filesystem depends on them.
Correct The kernel unpacks it into a memory-based filesystem and runs early userspace from it as a temporary root.
True. It is unpacked into tmpfs and its init program runs first; control is then switched to the real root, and the temporary one is released.
Not correct It is mounted from its own partition, which must be listed in /etc/fstab.
False. It is a compressed archive file under /boot, not a filesystem on a partition, and /etc/fstab is not read until the real root is already mounted.
Not correct On UEFI systems it replaces the boot loader.
False. The two are different stages: the loader runs before the kernel, and the initramfs is used by the kernel after it has started.
Why
The initramfs solves a bootstrapping problem: the kernel may need a driver or a userspace helper in order to mount the filesystem on which those very things are stored. Shipping them in a small archive that the boot loader can hand over in memory breaks the circle, and it is what lets distributions ship one generic kernel instead of compiling every storage driver in. Because its contents are a snapshot, changing the storage layout beneath the root filesystem requires regenerating the image with dracut or update-initramfs.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- manual page initrd(4)
Practise this
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