Re:Frood, an Alpine Initramfs NAS
by seiferteric on Monday December 16, 2024 @01:01PM
(#42433513)
I've been thinking about the opposite on my gentoo desktop, eliminating the initramfs. My understanding is if you compile the essential drivers you need for boot in the kernel (not as modules), then you don't need the initramfs step. Should result in faster boot.
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Static kernels like that used to be a lot more common when the kernel was simpler. I semi-fondly remember trying to optimize my 2.x era kernels on my Slackware box to eliminate everything I didn't absolutely need.
Re:Frood, an Alpine Initramfs NAS
by benlivengood on Monday December 16, 2024 @05:32PM
(#42436217)
Depends on how fast your BIOS/UEFI is at loading sectors off the disk; some are really slow and it can be faster to load and boot a small kernel and then load all the modules.
Re:Frood, an Alpine Initramfs NAS
by yjftsjthsd-h on Tuesday December 17, 2024 @12:05AM
(#42438493)
> My understanding is if you compile the essential drivers you need for boot in the kernel (not as modules), then you don't need the initramfs step.
Correct. When I ran Funtoo I did that so I can tell you it works.
> Should result in faster boot.
Possibly, but you should test. I expect it to work so long as you only bake in drivers needed for boot; if you include more then it could theoretically slow things down vs lazy-loading later.