Initrd Ramdisk VS initramfs/cpio ramdisk

1. Initrd Ramdisk
lake@lake-Latitude-5491:~$ file  ramdisk.img  
 
ramdisk.img: u-boot legacy uImage, ramdisk, Linux/ARM, RAMDisk Image (gzip), 2585838 bytes, Sun Jan 17 02:21:28 2016, Load Address: 0x00000000, Entry Point: 0x00000000, Header CRC: 0xBC8BCB2D, Data CRC: 0x581A0E0B
 
 ###### get rid of the header
lake@lake-Latitude-5491:~$ dd if=ramdisk.img.  of=ramdisk bs=64 skip=1 
 
40403+1 records in
40403+1 records out
2585838 bytes (2.6 MB, 2.5 MiB) copied, 0.0480631 s, 53.8 MB/s
lake@lake-Latitude-5491:~$ file ramdisk
ramdisk: gzip compressed data, was "ramdisk", last modified: Sun Jan 17 02:21:27 2016, max compression, from Unix
lake@lake-Latitude-5491:~$ mv ramdisk ramdisk.
.gz
lake@lake-Latitude-5491:~$ 
lake@lake-Latitude-5491:~$ gunzip -v ramdisk.gz 
ramdisk.gz: 69.2% -- replaced with ramdisk
lake@lake-Latitude-5491:~$ ls
  ramdisk-root ramdisk          ramdisk.img 
 
lake@lake-Latitude-5491:~$ file ramdisk
ramdisk: Linux rev 1.0 ext4 filesystem data, UUID=2d8db41f-b481-4e0f-9f9b-978f95511f3b (extents) (huge files)
lake@lake-Latitude-5491:~$ mount rmkdir ramdisk-loop 
 

lake@lake-Latitude-5491:~$ sudo mount -o loop  ramdisk   ramdisk-loop/ 
lake@lake-Latitude-5491:~$ ls -l ramdisk-loop/
/
total 30
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  3072 Jan 16  2016 bin
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  1024 Jan 17  2016 dev
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root  1024 Jan 17  2016 etc
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  3072 Jan 16  2016 lib
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    11 Jan 16  2016 linuxrc -> bin/busybox
drwx------ 2 root root 12288 Jan 17  2016 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  1024 Jan 16  2016 mnt
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  1024 Jan 16  2016 proc
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  1024 Jan 16  2016 root
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  3072 Jan 16  2016 sbin
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  1024 Jan 16  2016 sys
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  1024 Jan 16  2016 tmp
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root  1024 Jan 16  2016 usr
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  1024 Jan 16  2016 var
 
lake@lake-Latitude-5491:~$sudo  tar zcf ramdisk.tar.gz    ramdisk-loop

lake@lake-Latitude-5491:~$ ls
                   ramdisk       ramdisk.tar.gz
  ramdisk.img     ramdisk-loop    

 

1. initramfs/cpio   Uboot2020.04/ 

root@localhost:~/data/qemu/CortextA9-VersatileExpress/arm-v7-hf-A9-root-gcc9-busybox1.36$ sudo  sh -c "find . | cpio -H newc -o | gzip > ../arm-v7-hf-A9-root-gcc9-busybox1.36.initramfs.cpio.gz "
101350 blocks

root@localhost:~/data/qemu/CortextA9-VersatileExpress/arm-v7-hf-A9-root-gcc9-busybox1.36$ cd  ..
root@localhost:~/data/qemu/CortextA9-VersatileExpress$ mkimage -n 'uboot ext2 ramdisk rootfs' -A arm -O linux -T ramdisk -C gzip -d  arm-v7-hf-A9-root-gcc9-busybox1.36.initramfs.cpio.gz    arm-v7-hf-A9-root-gcc9-busybox1.36.initramfs.uboot
Image Name:   uboot ext2 ramdisk rootfs
Created:      Sat Apr  8 13:58:47 2023
Image Type:   ARM Linux RAMDisk Image (gzip compressed)
Data Size:    15396441 Bytes = 15035.59 KiB = 14.68 MiB
Load Address: 00000000
Entry Point:  00000000

2. initrd  loop  Uboot2017.03/tiny4412 

dd if=/dev/zero of=$TEMP_FILE bs=1M count=64

echo "------------------------------"
echo "mount loop"
losetup /dev/loop0 $TEMP_FILE
mke2fs -m 0 /dev/loop0
mkdir /mnt/loop
mount -t ext2 /dev/loop0 /mnt/loop
cp -arf $SRC_PATH/* /mnt/loop

echo "------------------------------"
echo "umount loop"
umount /mnt/loop
rm -rf /mnt/loop
losetup -d /dev/loop0

echo "------------------------------"
echo "gzip ramdisk"
gzip -v9 $TEMP_FILE
mv $TEMP_FILE.gz ramdisk.gz

echo "------------------------------"
echo "mkimage"
mkimage -n 'Tiny4412 Ramdisk Image' -A arm -O linux -T ramdisk -C gzip -d ramdisk.gz ramdisk.img

  ## example 

root@localhost:~/data/qemu/CortextA9-VersatileExpress$ dd if=/dev/zero of=./arm-v7-hf-A9-root-gcc9-busybox1.36.initrd   bs=1M  count=64
64+0 records in
64+0 records out
67108864 bytes (67 MB, 64 MiB) copied, 0.0593328 s, 1.1 GB/s
root@localhost:~/data/qemu/CortextA9-VersatileExpress$ losetup /dev/loop0  ./arm-v7-hf-A9-root-gcc9-busybox1.36.initrd 
losetup: /dev/loop0: failed to set up loop device: Permission denied
root@localhost:~/data/qemu/CortextA9-VersatileExpress$ sudo losetup /dev/loop0  ./arm-v7-hf-A9-root-gcc9-busybox1.36.initrd 
root@localhost:~/data/qemu/CortextA9-VersatileExpress$ sudo mke2fs  -m  0  /dev/loop0 
mke2fs 1.44.1 (24-Mar-2018)
Discarding device blocks: done                            
Creating filesystem with 65536 1k blocks and 16384 inodes
Filesystem UUID: 53ac0f35-b243-4816-b59f-0f2942d20801
Superblock backups stored on blocks: 
    8193, 24577, 40961, 57345

Allocating group tables: done                            
Writing inode tables: done                            
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

root@localhost:~/data/qemu/CortextA9-VersatileExpress$ mkdir loop
root@localhost:~/data/qemu/CortextA9-VersatileExpress$  mount -t ext2 /dev/loop0  loop/
mount: only root can use "--types" option
root@localhost:~/data/qemu/CortextA9-VersatileExpress$ sudo   mount -t ext2 /dev/loop0  loop/ 
root@localhost:~/data/qemu/CortextA9-VersatileExpress$ sudo cp arm-v7-hf-A9-root-gcc9-busybox1.36/*  -ar  -p  loop/
root@localhost:~/data/qemu/CortextA9-VersatileExpress$ ls loop/
bin  dev  etc  home  lib  linuxrc  lost+found  mnt  proc  root  sbin  sys  tmp  usr  var
root@localhost:~/data/qemu/CortextA9-VersatileExpress$ 
root@localhost:~/data/qemu/CortextA9-VersatileExpress$ sudo umount   loop/
root@localhost:~/data/qemu/CortextA9-VersatileExpress$ sudo losetup -d /dev/loop0

root@localhost:~/data/qemu/CortextA9-VersatileExpress$ du -hs   arm-v7-hf-A9-root-gcc9-busybox1.36.initrd 
54M    arm-v7-hf-A9-root-gcc9-busybox1.36.initrd
root@localhost:~/data/qemu/CortextA9-VersatileExpress$ sudo gzip  arm-v7-hf-A9-root-gcc9-busybox1.36.initrd
root@localhost:~/data/qemu/CortextA9-VersatileExpress$ du -hs   arm-v7-hf-A9-root-gcc9-busybox1.36.initrd 
arm-v7-hf-A9-root-gcc9-busybox1.36.initramfs.cpio.gz  arm-v7-hf-A9-root-gcc9-busybox1.36.initrd.gz
arm-v7-hf-A9-root-gcc9-busybox1.36.initramfs.uboot    
root@localhost:~/data/qemu/CortextA9-VersatileExpress$ du -hs   arm-v7-hf-A9-root-gcc9-busybox1.36.initrd.gz
16M    arm-v7-hf-A9-root-gcc9-busybox1.36.initrd.gz
root@localhost:~/data/qemu/CortextA9-VersatileExpress$   mkimage -n 'Tiny4412 Ramdisk Image' -A arm -O linux -T ramdisk -C gzip -d    arm-v7-hf-A9-root-gcc9-busybox1.36.initrd.gz    arm-v7-hf-A9-root-gcc9-busybox1.36.initrd.uimg  
Image Name:   Tiny4412 Ramdisk Image
Created:      Sat Apr  8 19:38:37 2023
Image Type:   ARM Linux RAMDisk Image (gzip compressed)
Data Size:    16290352 Bytes = 15908.55 KiB = 15.54 MiB
Load Address: 00000000
Entry Point:  00000000

boot with Uboot/2017.03  with initrd set