Written 1996 by Werner Almesberger almesber@lrc.epfl.ch and Hans Lermen lermen@elserv.ffm.fgan.de
initrd adds the capability to load a RAM disk by the boot loader. This RAM disk can then be mounted as the root file system and programs can be run from it. Afterwards, a new root file system can be mounted from a different device. The previous root (from initrd) is then either moved to the directory /initrd or it is unmounted.
initrd is mainly designed to allow system startup to occur in two phases, where the kernel comes up with a minimum set of compiled-in drivers, and where additional modules are loaded from initrd.