Subject: ramdisk size

From: "Sun, Lei" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 17:40:10 -0400

Hi :
   Sorry for my lack of experience in linux. Can anybody tell me how to
expand the size of the ramdisk (downloaded from CMU website for arm-linux
kernel)? 
   
   Thank you ! 
Lei Sun

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From: John G Dorsey <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 20:22:59 -0400

> expand the size of the ramdisk (downloaded from CMU website for arm-linux

Probably the easiest way is to `mkfs` a new ext2 filesystem on an unused ramdisk
device (e.g., /dev/ram0) which has the appropriate number of blocks.
(ramdisk_pcmcia.gz has 7500, for reference) If you're starting from an existing
filesystem, just mount the new device and the old ramdisk image, and transfer
the contents using a `tar` pipeline or similar.

Two limits of which to be aware:

1. On your development workstation, the default ramdisk size may be too small to
support a large image. You can pass an option to the kernel at boot time to
change this; in /etc/lilo.conf, `append="ramdisk_size=16384"` or the like will
deal with this.

2. On your ARM target, the amount of physical memory reserved for a ramdisk
image is hardwired into the kernel, if I recall correctly. I think it's
something like 3MB on Assabet, but you should double check this in
arch/arm/kernel just to be safe.

-jd

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From: Nicolas Pitre <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 21:56:49 -0400 (EDT)

> arch/arm/kernel just to be safe.

Also note that this is a limit on the compressed initrd file.  The limit
on the filesystem itself is typically set to 8192KB for Assabet.

Nicolas