Initrd
| Filesystems |
|---|
| Virtual Filesystems |
| Disk Filesystems |
| CD/DVD Filesystems |
| Network Filesystems |
| Flash Filesystems |
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Initial ramdisk
Is a small (usually few MiBs) filesystem image that has to be loaded before kernel execution take place at boot. It contains essential parts of the kernel, if kernel supports multiple object files (like Microkernel or Modular Kernel).
The filesystem of the image is totally kernel and version dependent. It's a common way to store data in a static archive file, and on boot "uncompress" it to dynamic filesystem in memory. Simplier implementations use flat image, which has several benefits:
- fast boot time (no need to interpret data, bulk copy can be used)
- easy to implement loader with BIOS calls in 512 byte
- Grub also supports loading image file as ramdisk
Also a very popular design choice to compress image file to shorten load time.