I read through this popular IBM doc (I see it referred quite often on the web) explaining the function of the initial RAM disk.
I hit a wall in conceptualizing how this works though.
In the doc it says
The boot loader, such as GRUB, identifies the kernel that is to be loaded and copies this kernel image and any associated initrd into memory
I'm already confused: Does it copy the entire kernel into memory or just part of it? If the entire kernel is in memory then why do we even need the initial RAM disk?
I thought the purpose of initrd was to be able to have a small generalized kernel image and initrd will install the correct modules in it before the kernel image is loaded. But if the entire kernel is already in memory why do we need initrd?
That also brings up another thing that confuses me - where are the modules that get loaded into the kernel located? Are all the kernel modules stored inside initrd?
udev
usually, and yes, automatically.