Image creation and activation
Automated generation
Every time a kernel is installed or upgraded, a pacman hook generates automatically a .preset file saved in
/etc/mkinitcpio.d/. For examplelinux.presetfor the official stable linux kernel package. A preset is simply a list of information required to create initial ramdisk images, instead of manually specifying the various parameters and the location of the output files. By default, it contains the instructions to create two images:
- the default ramdisk image created following the directives specified in the mkinitcpio #Configuration, and
- the fallback ramdisk image, same as above except that the autodetect hook is skipped during creation, thus including a full range of modules which supports most systems.
After creating the preset, the pacman hook calls the mkinitcpio script which generates the two images, using the information provided in the preset.
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