http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/filesystems/ramfs-rootfs-initramfs.txt
1 ramfs, rootfs and initramfs
2 October 17, 2005 3 Rob Landley <rob[AT]landley[DOT]net> 4 ============================= 5 6 What is ramfs? 7 -------------- 8 9 Ramfs is a very simple filesystem that exports Linux's disk caching 10 mechanisms (the page cache and dentry cache) as a dynamically resizable 11 RAM-based filesystem. 12 13 Normally all files are cached in memory by Linux. Pages of data read from 14 backing store (usually the block device the filesystem is mounted on) are kept 15 around in case it's needed again, but marked as clean (freeable) in case the 16 Virtual Memory system needs the memory for something else. Similarly, data 17 written to files is marked clean as soon as it has been written to backing 18 store, but kept around for caching purposes until the VM reallocates the 19 memory. A similar mechanism (the dentry cache) greatly speeds up access to 20 directories. 21 22 With ramfs, there is no backing store. Files written into ramfs allocate 23 dentries and page cache as usual, but there's nowhere to write them to. 24 This means the pages are never marked clean, so they can't be freed by the 25 VM when it's looking to recycle memory. 26 27 The amount of code required to implement ramfs is tiny, because all the 28 work is done by the existing Linux caching infrastructure. Basically, 29 you're mounting the disk cache as a filesystem. Because of this, ramfs is not 30 an optional component removable via menuconfig, since there would be negligible 31 space savings. 32 33 ramfs and ramdisk: 34 ------------------ 35 36 The older "ram disk" mechanism created a synthetic block device out of 37 an area of RAM and used it as backing store for a filesystem. This block 38 device was of fixed size, so the filesystem mounted on it was of fixed 39 size. Using a ram disk also required unnecessarily copying memory from the 40 fake block device into the page cache (and copying changes back out), as well 41 as creating and destroying dentries. Plus it needed a filesystem driver 42 (such as ext2) to format and interpret this data. 43 44 Compared to ramfs, this wastes memory (and memory bus bandwidth), creates 45 unnecessary work for the CPU, and pollutes the CPU caches. (There are tricks 46 to avoid this copying by playing with the page tables, but they're unpleasantly 47 complicated and turn out to be about as expensive as the copying anyway.) 48 More to the point, all the work ramfs is doing has to happen _anyway_, 49 since all file access goes through the page and dentry caches. The RAM 50 disk is simply unnecessary; ramfs is internally much simpler. 51 52 Another reason ramdisks are semi-obsolete is that the introduction of 53 loopback devices offered a more flexible and convenient way to create 54 synthetic block devices, now from files instead of from chunks of memory. 55 See losetup (8) for details. 56 57 ramfs and tmpfs: 58 ---------------- 59 60 One downside of ramfs is you can keep writing data into it until you fill 61 up all memory, and the VM can't free it because the VM thinks that files 62 should get written to backing store (rather than swap space), but ramfs hasn't 63 got any backing store. Because of this, only root (or a trusted user) should 64 be allowed write access to a ramfs mount. 65 66 A ramfs derivative called tmpfs was created to add size limits, and the ability 67 to write the data to swap space. Normal users can be allowed write access to 68 tmpfs mounts. See Documentation/filesystems/tmpfs.txt for more information. 69 70 What is rootfs? 71 --------------- 72 73 Rootfs is a special instance of ramfs (or tmpfs, if that's enabled), which is 74 always present in 2.6 systems. You can't unmount rootfs for approximately the 75 same reason you can't kill the init process; rather than having special code 76 to check for and handle an empty list, it's smaller and simpler for the kernel 77 to just make sure certain lists can't become empty. 78 79 Most systems just mount another filesystem over rootfs and ignore it. The 80 amount of space an empty instance of ramfs takes up is tiny. 81 82 What is initramfs? 83 ------------------ 84 85 All 2.6 Linux kernels contain a gzipped "cpio" format archive, which is 86 extracted into rootfs when the kernel boots up. After extracting, the kernel 87 checks to see if rootfs contains a file "init", and if so it executes it as PID 88 1. If found, this init process is responsible for bringing the system the 89 rest of the way up, including locating and mounting the real root device (if 90 any). If rootfs does not contain an init program after the embedded cpio 91 archive is extracted into it, the kernel will fall through to the older code 92 to locate and mount a root partition, then exec some variant of /sbin/init 93 out of that. 94 95 All this differs from the old initrd in several ways: 96 97 - The old initrd was always a separate file, while the initramfs archive is 98 linked into the linux kernel image. (The directory linux-*/usr is devoted 99 to generating this archive during the build.) 100 101 - The old initrd file was a gzipped filesystem image (in some file format, 102 such as ext2, that needed a driver built into the kernel), while the new 103 initramfs archive is a gzipped cpio archive (like tar only simpler, 104 see cpio(1) and Documentation/early-userspace/buffer-format.txt). The 105 kernel's cpio extraction code is not only extremely small, it's also 106 __init text and data that can be discarded during the boot process. 107 108 - The program run by the old initrd (which was called /initrd, not /init) did 109 some setup and then returned to the kernel, while the init program from 110 initramfs is not expected to return to the kernel. (If /init needs to hand 111 off control it can overmount / with a new root device and exec another init 112 program. See the switch_root utility, below.) 113 114 - When switching another root device, initrd would pivot_root and then 115 umount the ramdisk. But initramfs is rootfs: you can neither pivot_root 116 rootfs, nor unmount it. Instead delete everything out of rootfs to 117 free up the space (find -xdev / -exec rm '{}' ';'), overmount rootfs 118 with the new root (cd /newmount; mount --move . /; chroot .), attach 119 stdin/stdout/stderr to the new /dev/console, and exec the new init. 120 121 Since this is a remarkably persnickety process (and involves deleting 122 commands before you can run them), the klibc package introduced a helper 123 program (utils/run_init.c) to do all this for you. Most other packages 124 (such as busybox) have named this command "switch_root". 125 126 Populating initramfs: 127 --------------------- 128 129 The 2.6 kernel build process always creates a gzipped cpio format initramfs 130 archive and links it into the resulting kernel binary. By default, this 131 archive is empty (consuming 134 bytes on x86). 132 133 The config option CONFIG_INITRAMFS_SOURCE (in General Setup in menuconfig, 134 and living in usr/Kconfig) can be used to specify a source for the 135 initramfs archive, which will automatically be incorporated into the 136 resulting binary. This option can point to an existing gzipped cpio 137 archive, a directory containing files to be archived, or a text file 138 specification such as the following example: 139 140 dir /dev 755 0 0 141 nod /dev/console 644 0 0 c 5 1 142 nod /dev/loop0 644 0 0 b 7 0 143 dir /bin 755 1000 1000 144 slink /bin/sh busybox 777 0 0 145 file /bin/busybox initramfs/busybox 755 0 0 146 dir /proc 755 0 0 147 dir /sys 755 0 0 148 dir /mnt 755 0 0 149 file /init initramfs/init.sh 755 0 0 150 151 Run "usr/gen_init_cpio" (after the kernel build) to get a usage message 152 documenting the above file format. 153 154 One advantage of the configuration file is that root access is not required to 155 set permissions or create device nodes in the new archive. (Note that those 156 two example "file" entries expect to find files named "init.sh" and "busybox" in 157 a directory called "initramfs", under the linux-2.6.* directory. See 158 Documentation/early-userspace/README for more details.) 159 160 The kernel does not depend on external cpio tools. If you specify a 161 directory instead of a configuration file, the kernel's build infrastructure 162 creates a configuration file from that directory (usr/Makefile calls 163 scripts/gen_initramfs_list.sh), and proceeds to package up that directory 164 using the config file (by feeding it to usr/gen_init_cpio, which is created 165 from usr/gen_init_cpio.c). The kernel's build-time cpio creation code is 166 entirely self-contained, and the kernel's boot-time extractor is also 167 (obviously) self-contained. 168 169 The one thing you might need external cpio utilities installed for is creating 170 or extracting your own preprepared cpio files to feed to the kernel build 171 (instead of a config file or directory). 172 173 The following command line can extract a cpio image (either by the above script 174 or by the kernel build) back into its component files: 175 176 cpio -i -d -H newc -F initramfs_data.cpio --no-absolute-filenames 177 178 The following shell script can create a prebuilt cpio archive you can 179 use in place of the above config file: 180 181 #!/bin/sh 182 183 # Copyright 2006 Rob Landley <rob[AT]landley.net> and TimeSys Corporation[DOT] 184 # Licensed under GPL version 2 185 186 if [ $# -ne 2 ] 187 then 188 echo "usage: mkinitramfs directory imagename.cpio.gz" 189 exit 1 190 fi 191 192 if [ -d "$1" ] 193 then 194 echo "creating $2 from $1" 195 (cd "$1"; find . | cpio -o -H newc | gzip) > "$2" 196 else 197 echo "First argument must be a directory" 198 exit 1 199 fi 200 201 Note: The cpio man page contains some bad advice that will break your initramfs 202 archive if you follow it. It says "A typical way to generate the list 203 of filenames is with the find command; you should give find the -depth option 204 to minimize problems with permissions on directories that are unwritable or not 205 searchable." Don't do this when creating initramfs.cpio.gz images, it won't 206 work. The Linux kernel cpio extractor won't create files in a directory that 207 doesn't exist, so the directory entries must go before the files that go in 208 those directories. The above script gets them in the right order. 209 210 External initramfs images: 211 -------------------------- 212 213 If the kernel has initrd support enabled, an external cpio.gz archive can also 214 be passed into a 2.6 kernel in place of an initrd. In this case, the kernel 215 will autodetect the type (initramfs, not initrd) and extract the external cpio 216 archive into rootfs before trying to run /init. 217 218 This has the memory efficiency advantages of initramfs (no ramdisk block 219 device) but the separate packaging of initrd (which is nice if you have 220 non-GPL code you'd like to run from initramfs, without conflating it with 221 the GPL licensed Linux kernel binary). 222 223 It can also be used to supplement the kernel's built-in initramfs image. The 224 files in the external archive will overwrite any conflicting files in 225 the built-in initramfs archive. Some distributors also prefer to customize 226 a single kernel image with task-specific initramfs images, without recompiling. 227 228 Contents of initramfs: 229 ---------------------- 230 231 An initramfs archive is a complete self-contained root filesystem for Linux. 232 If you don't already understand what shared libraries, devices, and paths 233 you need to get a minimal root filesystem up and running, here are some 234 references: 235 http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Bootdisk-HOWTO/ 236 http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/From-PowerUp-To-Bash-Prompt-HOWTO.html 237 http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/stable/ 238 239 The "klibc" package (http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/libs/klibc) is 240 designed to be a tiny C library to statically link early userspace 241 code against, along with some related utilities. It is BSD licensed. 242 243 I use uClibc (http://www.uclibc.org) and busybox (http://www.busybox.net) 244 myself. These are LGPL and GPL, respectively. (A self-contained initramfs 245 package is planned for the busybox 1.3 release.) 246 247 In theory you could use glibc, but that's not well suited for small embedded 248 uses like this. (A "hello world" program statically linked against glibc is 249 over 400k. With uClibc it's 7k. Also note that glibc dlopens libnss to do 250 name lookups, even when otherwise statically linked.) 251 252 A good first step is to get initramfs to run a statically linked "hello world" 253 program as init, and test it under an emulator like qemu (www.qemu.org) or 254 User Mode Linux, like so: 255 256 cat > hello.c << EOF 257 #include <stdio.h> 258 #include <unistd.h> 259 260 int main(int argc, char *argv[]) 261 { 262 printf("Hello world!/n"); 263 sleep(999999999); 264 } 265 EOF 266 gcc -static hello.c -o init 267 echo init | cpio -o -H newc | gzip > test.cpio.gz 268 # Testing external initramfs using the initrd loading mechanism. 269 qemu -kernel /boot/vmlinuz -initrd test.cpio.gz /dev/zero 270 271 When debugging a normal root filesystem, it's nice to be able to boot with 272 "init=/bin/sh". The initramfs equivalent is "rdinit=/bin/sh", and it's 273 just as useful. 274 275 Why cpio rather than tar? 276 ------------------------- 277 278 This decision was made back in December, 2001. The discussion started here: 279 280 http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0112.2/1538.html 281 282 And spawned a second thread (specifically on tar vs cpio), starting here: 283 284 http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0112.2/1587.html 285 286 The quick and dirty summary version (which is no substitute for reading 287 the above threads) is: 288 289 1) cpio is a standard. It's decades old (from the AT&T days), and already 290 widely used on Linux (inside RPM, Red Hat's device driver disks). Here's 291 a Linux Journal article about it from 1996: 292 293 http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/1213 294 295 It's not as popular as tar because the traditional cpio command line tools 296 require _truly_hideous_ command line arguments. But that says nothing 297 either way about the archive format, and there are alternative tools, 298 such as: 299 300 http://freshmeat.net/projects/afio/ 301 302 2) The cpio archive format chosen by the kernel is simpler and cleaner (and 303 thus easier to create and parse) than any of the (literally dozens of) 304 various tar archive formats. The complete initramfs archive format is 305 explained in buffer-format.txt, created in usr/gen_init_cpio.c, and 306 extracted in init/initramfs.c. All three together come to less than 26k 307 total of human-readable text. 308 309 3) The GNU project standardizing on tar is approximately as relevant as 310 Windows standardizing on zip. Linux is not part of either, and is free 311 to make its own technical decisions. 312 313 4) Since this is a kernel internal format, it could easily have been 314 something brand new. The kernel provides its own tools to create and 315 extract this format anyway. Using an existing standard was preferable, 316 but not essential. 317 318 5) Al Viro made the decision (quote: "tar is ugly as hell and not going to be 319 supported on the kernel side"): 320 321 http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0112.2/1540.html 322 323 explained his reasoning: 324 325 http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0112.2/1550.html 326 http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0112.2/1638.html 327 328 and, most importantly, designed and implemented the initramfs code. 329 330 Future directions: 331 ------------------ 332 333 Today (2.6.16), initramfs is always compiled in, but not always used. The 334 kernel falls back to legacy boot code that is reached only if initramfs does 335 not contain an /init program. The fallback is legacy code, there to ensure a 336 smooth transition and allowing early boot functionality to gradually move to 337 "early userspace" (I.E. initramfs). 338 339 The move to early userspace is necessary because finding and mounting the real 340 root device is complex. Root partitions can span multiple devices (raid or 341 separate journal). They can be out on the network (requiring dhcp, setting a 342 specific MAC address, logging into a server, etc). They can live on removable 343 media, with dynamically allocated major/minor numbers and persistent naming 344 issues requiring a full udev implementation to sort out. They can be 345 compressed, encrypted, copy-on-write, loopback mounted, strangely partitioned, 346 and so on. 347 348 This kind of complexity (which inevitably includes policy) is rightly handled 349 in userspace. Both klibc and busybox/uClibc are working on simple initramfs 350 packages to drop into a kernel build. 351 352 The klibc package has now been accepted into Andrew Morton's 2.6.17-mm tree. 353 The kernel's current early boot code (partition detection, etc) will probably 354 be migrated into a default initramfs, automatically created and used by the