README

   1 Dracut
   2 ------
   3
   4 This is the simple skeleton of a new initramfs infrastructure.
   5 Information about our goals and aims can be found at
   6 https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Initrdrewrite
   7
   8 Unlike existing initramfs's, this is an attempt at having as little as
   9 possible hard-coded into the initramfs as possible.  The initramfs has
  10 (basically) one purpose in life -- getting the rootfs mounted so that
  11 we can transition to the real rootfs.  This is all driven off of
  12 device availability.  Therefore, instead of scripts hard-coded to do
  13 various things, we depend on udev to create device nodes for us and
  14 then when we have the rootfs's device node, we mount and carry on.
  15 This helps to keep the time required in the initramfs as little as
  16 possible so that things like a 5 second boot aren't made impossible as
  17 a result of the very existence of an initramfs.  It's likely that
  18 we'll grow some hooks for running arbitrary commands in the flow of
  19 the script, but it's worth trying to resist the urge as much as we can
  20 as hooks are guaranteed to be the path to slow-down.
  21
  22 Also, there is an attempt to keep things as distribution-agnostic as
  23 possible.  Every distribution has their own tool here and it's not
  24 something which is really interesting to have separate across them.
  25 So contributions to help decrease the distro-dependencies are welcome.
  26
  27 The git tree can be found at
  28 git://fedorapeople.org/~katzj/dracut.git for now.  See the TODO
  29 file for things which still need to be done and HACKING for some
  30 instructions on how to get started.  There is also a mailing list that
  31 is being used for the discussion -- initramfs@vger.kernel.org.  It is
  32 a typical vger list, send mail to majordomo@vger.kernel.org with body
  33 of 'subscribe initramfs email@host.com'
  34
  35
  36 Licensed under the GPLv2
  37
  38 Copyright 2008, Red Hat, Inc. -- Jeremy Katz <katzj@redhat.com>