Examining (or Modifying) the Contents of an initrd

If you have an existing initrd that you want to examine or modify, use the following commands to set up and mount a loopback device:

# gunzip ramdisk.image.gz
# mount -o loop ramdisk.image <mount_point>

These steps uncompress the image file, associate it with the loopback device, and mount the loopback device on a directory. Replace <mount_point> with the name of the directory (such as /mnt) on which you want to temporarily mount the loopback device.

After you have finished making any changes, use the following commands to unmount the loopback device and compress the initrd image:

# umount <mount_point>
# gzip -9 ramdisk.image