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Systems & Data Center · Advanced

initramfs

An initial RAM filesystem loaded by the boot loader that contains drivers and tools needed to mount the real root filesystem.

Definition

initramfs includes modules for storage controllers, LVM, RAID and encryption so the kernel can find root. It is regenerated with dracut on RHEL or update-initramfs on Debian, typically after driver or storage changes.

Example

dracut -f rebuilds the initramfs for the running kernel.

Exam tip

If a system cannot find its root volume after a storage driver change, rebuilding the initramfs is a common fix.

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