<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Sep 4, 2023 at 8:56 AM Vincenzo Nicosia <<a href="mailto:katolaz@freaknet.org">katolaz@freaknet.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">rather, back then you didn't need the same kernel to run on a wide<br>
variety of hardware, with all the possible different combinations of<br>
peripherals, requiring all sorts of different drivers. <br>
<br>
I think that's the only real reason why initramfs came to existence:<br>
allowing a selection of kernel modules to be loaded at init time,<br>
depending on the hardware at disposal on that machine. Then things went<br>
south, and more recent initramfs have everything and the kitchen sink.<br>
But that's another story.</blockquote><div><br></div><div>Yea, it was an effort to move mounting of root out of the kernel. The earliest</div><div>scripts just mounted the right disk and moved on, and didn't load any new</div><div>drivers: they just had the logic to pick the desired root. But at the same time,</div><div>there were a lot of people that were running on 4MB and 8MB systems that</div><div>noticed they could put all the router software in the initramfs and never pivot</div><div>to something else and they could have quite the product with that. And those</div><div>were the first few bricks that paved the road to hell :)</div><div><br></div><div>Warner<br></div></div></div>