Initramfs compression does not make much sense for the architectures
that support compressed kernel images because in this case the data
would be compressed twice. This will eventually result in a bigger
kernel image and time overhead when uncompressing it.
The only reason to use compressed initramfs is to reduce memory
usage when the kernel prepares rootfs, and both the unpacked
filesystem and initramfs.cpio are present in the memory.
Buildroot attempts to force GZIP compression for initramfs,
however it doesn't always work because initramfs compression mode
depends on RAM disk compression supported by the kernel.
Thus, CONFIG_INITRAMFS_COMPRESSION_GZIP depends on CONFIG_RD_GZIP.
If CONFIG_RD_GZIP is not set, setting GZIP initramfs compression
will have no effect.
Besides, the kernel also supports other compression methods,
like BZIP2, LZMA, XZ and LZO. Forcing the good old GZIP does not
really make much sense any more.
This removes initramfs compression settings from Buildroot,
so that the default value preset in the kernel config is used,
which is CONFIG_INITRAMFS_COMPRESSION_NONE.
If initramfs compression is still needed, it can be set
in the kernel config (using make linux-menuconfig)
Signed-off-by: Valentine Barshak <gvaxon@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Arnout Vandecappelle (Essensium/Mind) <arnout@mind.be>
Signed-off-by: Peter Korsgaard <jacmet@sunsite.dk>
Recent mails on the list show that it is not very clear how to create
an initial RAM fs with buildroot. So make this more explicit in the
cpio and initramfs help texts. Hopefully this will reduce the /init
debugging we have to do.
Signed-off-by: Arnout Vandecappelle (Essensium/Mind) <arnout@mind.be>
Signed-off-by: Peter Korsgaard <jacmet@sunsite.dk>
An initramfs is in fact the same as a cpio archive, but embedded in
the kernel. So instead of duplicating the cpio infrastructure,
we can simply build images/rootfs.cpio and link that into the
kernel.
Signed-off-by: Arnout Vandecappelle (Essensium/Mind) <arnout@mind.be>
Signed-off-by: Peter Korsgaard <jacmet@sunsite.dk>
