The initial RAM disk

This image uses dracut to build an initial RAM disk or "initrd" for short.

It is important to understand that the initrd is generated at build time and included in the container image in /usr/lib/modules/$kver/initramfs.img

Modifying and regenerating the initrd

Writing drop-in configuration

Dracut supports "drop-in" config files; per the configuration guidance prefer using the location in /usr, which is /usr/lib/dracut/dracut.conf.d.

A configuration drop-in similar to the following can be placed into e.g. /usr/lib/dracut/dracut.conf.d/50-custom-added-modules.conf:

dracutmodules+=" somemodule "

Regenerating the initrd

An invocation similar to the following will regenerate the initrd as part of a container build:

FROM <baseimage>
COPY 50-custom-added-modules.conf /usr/lib/dracut/dracut.conf.d
RUN set -x; kver=$(cd /usr/lib/modules && echo *); dracut -vf /usr/lib/modules/$kver/initramfs.img $kver

Note that we must explicitly pass dracut the kernel version to target; the default will attempt to pull the running kernel version which is almost always the incorrect thing to do.

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