currently poring over the initramfs code, and i'm a bit curious about the following. in usr/Kconfig, all the possible compression protocols can be selected, and by default are: config RD_GZIP bool "Support initial ramdisks compressed using gzip" default y select DECOMPRESS_GZIP help Support loading of a gzip-encoded initial ramdisk or cpio buffer. If unsure, say Y. config RD_BZIP2 bool "Support initial ramdisks compressed using bzip2" default y select DECOMPRESS_BZIP2 help Support loading of a bzip2-encoded initial ramdisk or cpio buffer. If unsure, say N. ... etc etc ... but in the top-level Makefile, here are the lines that ostensibly select which compression to actually use: # Select initial ramdisk compression format, default is gzip(1). # This shall be used by the dracut(8) tool while creating an initramfs image. # INITRD_COMPRESS-y := gzip INITRD_COMPRESS-$(CONFIG_RD_BZIP2) := bzip2 INITRD_COMPRESS-$(CONFIG_RD_LZMA) := lzma INITRD_COMPRESS-$(CONFIG_RD_XZ) := xz INITRD_COMPRESS-$(CONFIG_RD_LZO) := lzo INITRD_COMPRESS-$(CONFIG_RD_LZ4) := lz4 # do not export INITRD_COMPRESS, since we didn't actually # choose a sane default compression above. # export INITRD_COMPRESS := $(INITRD_COMPRESS-y) so as i read this, the single compression protocol selected will be the last one configured in that list, but where is that variable eventually used? where is the build code or utility that examines the value eventually set and invokes dracut, as the comment suggests? rday -- ======================================================================== Robert P. J. Day Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA http://crashcourse.ca Twitter: http://twitter.com/rpjday LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday ========================================================================