[TriLUG] confusion regarding need for initrd during boot

[Jeremy P]

On Tue, 6 Nov 2001, rpjday wrote:

> 
>   just for laughs, i removed the "initrd" line from grub.conf to
> see what would happen if the kernel had no pointer to an initrd
> file from which to load an ext3 module.  still booted just fine.
> wha..???  
> 
>   so i explicitly deleted that initrd file from /boot, just in
> case the kernel was being clever and looking for it there anyway.
> still booted just fine.
> 
>   ok, so what's going on?  can ext3 filesystems be mounted
> even without an available ext3 module or built-in support for
> ext3 in the kernel?  what gives?

Are you sure that ext3 support is a module?  Can you rmmod it?
(Remember that ext3 filesystems can be mounted as ext2 -- are you sure
your fstab is correct and is mounting it as ext3?)

--Jeremy