What's the Dealio with initrd, etcfstab, initrd.img inittab, vmlinuz, grub and parbreastions 521

On Fri, 24 Feb 2006 14:24:23 -0800, iforone

Inline: The answer is partly mixed in with the question. Just a notice to make sure a comment isn't overlooked.

You should have a non-priviledged (non-root) user for yourself. I use an account named "doug" on my machine. Any new users will use the default X windows manager.

vmlinuz-2.6.8-2-386 is a real kernel image, otherwise you wouldn't be booting linux at all. initrd.img-2.6.8-2-386 appears to be a matching initial ramdisk for that kernel. Initial ramdisks are used mostly for loading kernel modules which are necessary to access the root filesystem. The modules can be for hardware (a scsi controller, for example) or for software (a filesystem not included directly inside the kernel, say XFS). The kernel and the kernel modules generally are prepared as a set when the kernel is configured and compiled.

I don't know what Debian means by a kernel image, other than what I wrote above.

That's why it's easier to be a Slacker.

There are some big changes between the 2.4.x and 2.6.x kernels. This is probably a side effect from that.

Note: You can have only ACPI or APM. ACPI is preferred with 2.6.x kernels.

Probably not.

This appears to be different under Debian than I am used to in Slackware.

Note: my comments inline (above).

I think you are making rapid progress. Keep up the good work. Curiosity is where it starts. I would recommend a basic book on GNU-Linux command line tools, such as Linux in a Nutshell:

Or Teach Yourself Unix in 24 Hours:

Of course, the Linux Documentation Project is the definitive resource. And Wikipedia has some great overviews.

-- Douglas Mayne