Initramfs

How to inject a separate initramfs file into a 2.6 vmlinux: (as section .init.ramfs)

First turn the initramfs into an ELF, excluding anything but the file data:

   objcopy -I binary -O elf32-i386 -B i386 --redefine-sym _binary_initramfs_start=.init.ramfs -N _binary_initramfs_end -N _binary_initramfs_size initramfs initramfs.elf

Note that the symbol names _binary_initramfs_{start,end,size} depend on the input filename. objcopy does some translation here, e.g. a period (.) in the filename will become an underscore (_) in the symbols.

Now add the .init.ramfs section from initramfs.elf into the vmlinux file:

   objcopy -I elf32-i386 -O elf32-i386 --add-section .init.ramfs=initramfs.elf vmlinux vmlinux.withnewinitramfs

All done.