path: root/initramfs-tools.8

.TH INITRAMFS-TOOLS 8  "Date: 2005/12/06" "" "mkinitramfs script overview"

.SH NAME
initramfs-tools \- an introduction to writing scripts for mkinitramfs

.SH DESCRIPTION
initramfs-tools has one main script and two different sets of subscripts which 
will be used during different phases of execution. Each of these will be
discussed separately below with the help of an imaginary tool which performs a
frobnication of a lvm partition prior to mounting the root partition.

.SS Hook scripts
These are used when an initramfs image is created and not included in the 
image itself. They can however cause files to be included in the image.

.SS Boot scripts
These are included in the initramfs image and normally executed during 
kernel boot in the early user-space before the root partition has been
mounted. 

initramfs-tools uses shell variable names for handling dependencies.
Notice that `-' is not a valid shell variable name and thus should
not be used as script filename.

.SH INIT SCRIPT
The script which is executed first and is in charge of running all other
scripts can be found in /usr/share/initramfs-tools/init. It takes a number of
arguments which influence the boot procedure:

.SS Boot options

.TP
\fB \fI init
the binary to hand over execution to on the root fs after the initramfs scripts are done.

.TP
\fB \fI root
the device node to mount as the rootfs.

.TP
\fB \fI nfsroot
can be either "auto" to try to get the relevant information from DHCP or a
string of the form NFSSERVER:NFSPATH 

.TP
\fB \fI boot
either local or NFS (affects which initramfs scripts are run, see the "Subdirectories" section under boot scripts).

.TP
\fB \fI resume
On install initramfs-tools tries to autodetect the resume partition. On success
the RESUME variable is written to /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume.
The boot variable overrides it.

.TP
\fB \fI quiet
reduces the amount of text output to the console during boot

.TP
\fB \fI ro
mounts the rootfs read-only

.TP
\fB \fI rw
mounts the rootfs read-write

.TP
\fB \fI debug
generates lots of output to /tmp/initramfs.debug

.TP
\fB \fI break
spawns a shell in the initramfs image at chosen run-time


.SH HOOK SCRIPTS

Hooks can be found in two places: /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks and
/etc/initramfs-tools/hooks. They are executed during generation of the
initramfs-image and are responsible for including all the necessary components
in the image itself. No guarantees are made as to the order in which the
different scripts are executed unless the prereqs are setup in the script. 

.SS Header
In order to support prereqs, each script should begin with the following lines:

.RS
.nf
#!/bin/sh
PREREQ=""
prereqs()
{
	echo "$PREREQ"
}

case $1 in
prereqs)
	prereqs
	exit 0
	;;
esac

. /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hook-functions
# Begin real processing below this line
.fi
.RE

For example, if you are writing a new hook script which relies on lvm, the line
starting with PREREQ should be changed to PREREQ="lvm" which will ensure that
the lvm hook script is run before your custom script.

.SS Help functions
/usr/share/initramfs-tools/hook-functions contains a number of functions which
deal with some common tasks in a hook script:
.TP
\fB \fI 
manual_add_modules
adds a module (and any modules which it depends on) to the initramfs image.
.RS
.PP
.B Example:
manual_add_modules isofs
.RE

.TP
\fB \fI
add_modules_from_file
reads a file containing a list of modules (one per line) to be added to the
initramfs image. The file can contain comments (lines starting with #) and
arguments to the modules by writing the arguments on the same line as the name
of the module.
.RS
.PP
.B Example:
add_modules_from_file /tmp/modlist
.RE

.TP
\fB \fI
force_load
adds a module (and its dependencies) to the initramfs image and also
unconditionally loads the module during boot. Also supports passing arguments
to the module by listing them after the module name.
.RS
.PP
.B Example:
force_load cdrom debug=1
.RE

.TP
\fB \fI
copy_modules_dir
copies an entire module directory from /lib/modules/KERNELVERSION/ into the
initramfs image.
.RS
.PP
.B Example:
copy_modules_dir kernel/drivers/pci/foobar
.RE

.SS Including binaries
If you need to copy binaries to the initramfs module, a command like this
should be used:
.PP
.RS
copy_exec /sbin/mdadm "${DESTDIR}/sbin"
.RE

mkinitramfs will automatically detect which libraries the executable depends on
and copy them to the initramfs. This means that most executables, unless
compiled with klibc, will automatically include glibc in the image which will
increase its size by several hundred kilobytes.


.SH BOOT SCRIPTS

Similarly to hook scripts, boot scripts can be found in two places
/usr/share/initramfs-tools/scripts/ and /etc/initramfs-tools/scripts/. There
are a number of subdirectories to these two directories which control the boot
stage at which the scripts are executed.

.SS Header
Like for hook scripts, there are no guarantees as to the order in which the
different scripts in one subdirectory (see "Subdirectories" below) are
executed. In order to define a certain order, a similar header as for hook
scripts should be used:

.RS
.nf
#!/bin/sh
PREREQ=""
prereqs()
{
	echo "$PREREQ"
}

case $1 in
prereqs)
	prereqs
	exit 0
	;;
esac
.fi
.RE

Where PREREQ is modified to list other scripts in the same subdirectory if necessary.

.SS Help functions
A number of functions (mostly dealing with output) are provided to boot scripts:

.TP
\fB \fI
log_success_msg
Logs a success message
.RS
.PP
.B Example:
log_success_msg "Frobnication successful"
.RE

.TP
\fB \fI
log_failure_msg
Logs a failure message
.RS
.PP
.B Example:
log_failure_msg "Frobnication component froobz missing"
.RE

.TP
\fB \fI
log_warning_msg
Logs a warning message
.RS
.PP
.B Example:
log_warning_msg "Only partial frobnication possible"
.RE

.TP
\fB \fI
log_begin_msg
Logs a message that some processing step has begun

.TP
\fB \fI
log_end_msg
Logs a message that some processing step is finished
.RS
.PP
.B Example:
.PP
.RS
.nf
log_begin_msg "Frobnication begun"
# Do something
log_end_msg
.fi
.RE
.RE

.TP
\fB \fI
panic
Logs an error message and executes a shell in the initramfs image to allow the
user to investigate the situation.
.RS
.PP
.B Example:
panic "Frobnication failed"
.RE

.SS Subdirectories
Both /usr/share/initramfs-tools/scripts and /etc/initramfs-tools/scripts
contains the following subdirectories.

.TP
\fB \fI
init-top
the scripts in this directory are the first scripts to be executed after sysfs
and procfs have been mounted and /dev/console and /dev/null have been created.
No other device files are present yet.

.TP
\fB \fI
init-premount
runs the udev hooks for populating the /dev tree (udev will keep running until
init-bottom) after modules specified by hooks and /etc/initramfs-tools/modules
have been loaded.

.TP
\fB \fI
local-top OR nfs-top
After these scripts have been executed, the root device node is expected to be
present (local) or the network interface is expected to be usable (NFS).

.TP
\fB \fI
local-premount OR nfs-premount
are run after the sanity of the root device has been verified (local) or the
network interface has been brought up (NFS), but before the actual root fs has
been mounted.

.TP
\fB \fI
local-bottom OR nfs-bottom
are run after the rootfs has been mounted (local) or the NFS root share has
been mounted. udev is stopped.

.TP
\fB \fI
init-bottom
are the last scripts to be executed before procfs and sysfs are moved to the
real rootfs and execution is turned over to the init binary which should now be
found in the mounted rootfs.

.SS Boot parameters
.TP
\fB \fI
/conf/param.conf
allows boot scripts to change exported variables that are listed on top of init. Write the new values to it. It will be sourced after an boot script run if it exists.


.SH EXAMPLES

.SS Hook script
An example hook script would look something like this (and would usually be
placed in /etc/initramfs-tools/hooks/frobnicate):

.RS
.nf
#!/bin/sh
# Example frobnication hook script

PREREQ="lvm"
prereqs()
{
	echo "$PREREQ"
}

case $1 in
prereqs)
	prereqs
	exit 0
	;;
esac

. /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hook-functions
# Begin real processing below this line

if [ ! -x "/sbin/frobnicate" ]; then
	exit 0
fi

force_load frobnicator interval=10
cp /sbin/frobnicate "${DESTDIR}/sbin"
exit 0
.fi
.RE

.SS Boot script
An example boot script would look something like this (and would usually be placed in /etc/initramfs-tools/scripts/local-top/frobnicate):

.RS
.nf
#!/bin/sh
# Example frobnication boot script

PREREQ="lvm"
prereqs()
{
	echo "$PREREQ"
}

case $1 in
prereqs)
	prereqs
	exit 0
	;;
esac

# Begin real processing below this line
if [ ! -x "/sbin/frobnicate" ]; then
	panic "Frobnication executable not found"
fi

if [ ! -e "/dev/mapper/frobb" ]; then
	panic "Frobnication device not found"
fi

log_begin_msg "Starting frobnication"		
/sbin/frobnicate "/dev/mapper/frobb" || panic "Frobnication failed"
log_end_msg

exit 0
.fi
.RE

.SH DEBUG
It is easy to check the generated initramfs for its content. One may need 
to double-check if it contains the relevant binaries, libs or modules:
.RS
.nf
mkdir tmp/initramfs
cd tmp/initramfs
gunzip -c -9 /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-1-686 | \\
cpio -i -d -H newc --no-absolute-filenames
.fi
.RE


.SH AUTHOR
The initramfs-tools are written by Jeff Bailey <jbailey@ubuntu.com>.
.PP
This manual was written by David  H\[:a]rdeman <david@2gen.com>,
updated by Maximilian Attems <maks@sternwelten.at>.

.SH SEE ALSO
.BR
initramfs.conf (5), mkinitramfs (8), update-initramfs(8)